Get lost! (with help from Infinite Orienteering: The Hiker’s Path)

I wish my two current squeezes, Dagger Directive and Infinite Orienteering: The Hiker’s Path, could get together and produce a kid. As gratifying as it is to round a boulder or barge into a clearing and find the orange-and-white control point I’ve been seeking for ages, I think deep down I’d prefer to be hunting for weapon caches, rendezvous points, and camouflaged OPs.

Early Accessible since March, the £17 Infinite Orienteering: The Hiker’s Path is not nearly as pretty as its main rival…

…however it possesses something Virtual-O would die for – a random map and course generator.

That generator churns out tracts of wilderness that, bar a few askew cabins and unsightly tracks, look and feel like real places in upland Europe or North America. Invariably there are sufficient landmarks, contour lines, and terrain types, to make route planning interesting and periodic panorama pondering worthwhile, but not so many that getting lost or disorientated is a rare occurrence.

Ah, those two rocks over there have to be [checks map] that pair of boulders next to the marsh. I’ve gone too far! Time to retrace my steps… Hmm, I’ve been pushing through this pesky undergrowth for ages now, maybe I’ve succumbed to downhill drift and [checks map] strayed into the big crescent-shaped belt near the track instead of the small pocket of brush closer to the summit that contains checkpoint 42.

To run a course in Infinite Orienteering is to tackle a series of fiendishly intermingled first-person puzzles that – assuming you’re not using an old map seed – nobody has ever tackled before.

Whether you’re playing in point-to-point or scramble* mode, or going like the clappers or taking your time, hardly matters. This Swedish export lets users compete via asynchronous multiplayer, but works equally well as a leisurely solo pursuit. When I play, while I do my best to navigate efficiently and make good time, my only real goal is finishing the course.

* Bag CPs in any order.

Complementing the excellent geography generator is an exemplary 3D replay system that, once an event is over, delights in showing you your laser-like precision…

your sensible detours…

your minor cock-ups…

and your major ones…

Watching the red course line quarter a CP circle again and again, or hesitate for a moment on a summit or path bend, is guaranteed to bring vivid memories of your latest ramble flooding back.

Another great feature is the tutorial. Incorporating video sequences, IO’s instruction contains the best introduction to the easily-grasped basics of orienteering that I’ve ever encountered in a sim. No prior knowledge of the sport? No problem. You’ll be compass consulting, map rotating, and heather rustling in minutes.

Despite a graphics overhaul in July, IO’s Achilles heel remains its visuals. At times vistas are pretty convincing, but when tracks or barren slopes dominate a view it’s often a different story. While the game’s isolated boulders aren’t unsightly, be prepared for bare slopes that look like they’ve been sprayed with shotcrete.

In certain light conditions, unnaturally shiny foliage and pine trees with distracting pale outlines also do the game no favours.

Hopefully Infinite Orienteering will inspire a few other devs to build games around map reading and compass use on randomly generated maps. It doesn’t take much imagination to picture, say, an escape and evasion or guerilla warfare title with a thinly-veiled orienteering sim at its heart.

Roaming IO’s faux foxy forests in recent days, I’ve also found myself imagining…

• A fantasy/horror game in which finding the next protective fairy ring, ancient tree, stone circle or whatever by nightfall is potentially a matter of life and death.
• A mushroom collecting sim in which your most useful tool is a paper map prepared by your grandmother in the days before she died/vanished.
• An urban orienteering sim combining randomly generated locales with parkour.

While some sim genres are horribly oversubscribed, the one Infinite Orienteering occupies feels absurdly underdeveloped.