Sable

Sable follows the titular young woman through her Gliding, a rite of passage that sends her across vast deserts dotted with the remains of crashed spaceships and ancient wonders. Astride a customizable hoverbike, she must find out who she is beneath her mask by encountering other nomads, helping their clans and surfacing forgotten mysteries.

The striking flat-shaded art style is one of the most distinctive in any open world of recent years. Climbing, leaping, hovering and gliding all work together to make the monumental ruins traversable, while a Japanese Breakfast soundtrack wraps the journey in melancholy warmth.

The pacing is intentionally yours to set. There are no required quests gating progress - only puzzles to crack for rewards, masks and outfits to collect as identity markers, hoverbike parts to find, and even desert fishing and bug collecting to fill out a Vivarium. Discovery is the entire engine.