Summary
- Outer Wilds: A Solar system sandbox with a 22-minute time limit & no barriers to exploration.
- Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020: Real Earth rendered in detail, explore at any pace.
- Breath of the Wild: Seamless, physics-based freedom with rewarding exploration challenges.
There’s something magical about looking off into the distance in a game and knowing that it's actually possible to go there. Not in a cutscene. Not in a fast-travel menu. But on foot, horseback, dragonback, spaceship, or even a hang-glider. These are the kinds of games that hand over the keys and say, “Go ahead, see what happens.” And somehow, they manage to make the freedom feel meaningful, not overwhelming.
7 Open-World Games With More Than One Explorable Map
These open-world games feature not just one, but multiple separate maps for players to freely explore.
Some of them stretch across galaxies, others stay grounded in a single world, but all of them have one thing in common: they make exploration feel like a reward, not a chore. So here’s a love letter to the titles that made the world (or worlds) truly feel like they free to roam.
6 Outer Wilds
A Solar System-Sized Sandbox With A 22-Minute Time Bomb
Outer Wilds
- Released
- May 28, 2019
WHERE TO PLAY
- ESRB
- E10+ For Everyone 10+ due to Fantasy Violence, Alcohol Reference
- Genre(s)
- Adventure
Nothing tests the definition of “go anywhere” quite like a collapsing solar system with a 22-minute lifespan. Outer Wilds isn’t just a space exploration game; it’s a cosmic puzzle box where curiosity is both the map and the key. Players can touch down on any planet from the very start. No upgrade trees, no grinding, no artificial walls; just knowledge standing between them and the secrets hidden beneath the crust of a time-looping universe.
The planets aren’t massive, but they’re masterfully dense. One world is literally crumbling into a black hole, while another hides ancient ruins behind sand that’s constantly being siphoned away. It’s an astrophysics lesson disguised as an indie mystery, where the freedom to fly wherever is only matched by the existential weight of what’s out there waiting to be discovered.
5 Microsoft Flight Simulator (2020)
Earth, To Scale, From 30,000 Feet
Microsoft Flight Simulator
- Released
- August 18, 2020
WHERE TO PLAY
- ESRB
- E For Everyone
- Genre(s)
- Flight Simulator
There are open-world games, and then there’s Microsoft Flight Simulator, which casually includes the actual Earth. Every mountain, airport, and city is there, rendered in staggering detail with real-time weather systems and AI-assisted photogrammetry. Players who always wanted to buzz the Eiffel Tower or fly through a storm over the Himalayas can finally do it, all without leaving the cockpit.
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What really elevates this from a tech demo to a true go-anywhere experience is how it lets players set their own pace. Want to do a Tokyo-to-San Francisco red-eye in real time? No problem. Do players want to nosedive into their hometown, just to see if their street is in the game? Also possible. It’s less about quest markers and more about raw geographical awe.
4 No Man’s Sky
A Universe So Big, Even The Developers Get Lost
No Man's Sky
- Released
- August 9, 2016
WHERE TO PLAY
Once infamous for promising everything and delivering almost nothing, No Man’s Sky has slowly morphed into one of the most impressive comeback stories in modern gaming. At the heart of it all is its unmatched sense of scale; over 18 quintillion procedurally generated planets, all just a hyperspace jump away. That number is so absurd that players will never see the majority of them.
Every planet is explorable on foot, by exocraft, or by starship, with no loading screens between space and surface. There are toxic wastelands, lush alien forests, and worlds lit by twin suns, all governed by their own unique ecosystems and weather patterns. And thanks to constant updates, there are now settlements to build, galaxies to map, and ancient monoliths to uncover. The universe feels infinite, not just in terms of size, but also in its possibilities.
3 Minecraft
Infinite Blocks, Infinite Direction
Minecraft
- Released
- November 18, 2011
WHERE TO PLAY
- ESRB
- E10+ For Everyone 10+ Due To Fantasy Violence
- Genre(s)
- Sandbox, Survival
Minecraft didn’t invent open exploration, but it perfected the idea that going anywhere should mean building anywhere, too. The seed-generated worlds stretch out for literal millions of blocks, with procedurally generated terrain that ranges from mushroom islands to underground cities crawling with Wardens. Because of how it’s built, every corner of the world is destructible, rearrangeable, and explorable in ways no pre-designed world ever could be.
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Minecraft provides players with a chance to explore and build to their heart's content. There are a few games that draw out a similar creativity.
What makes Minecraft so enduring isn’t just the scale of its world, but the creativity it encourages within that space. Players carve out mountains to build castles, dig into the bedrock in search of diamond veins, or just wander into the nearest cave and get hopelessly lost. Whether it’s survival mode or creative mode, the entire planet is both a blank canvas and a living system to tinker with.
2 Elden Ring
The Only Map Where Every Path Leads To Trouble
Elden Ring
- Released
- February 25, 2022
WHERE TO PLAY
There’s freedom, and then there’s Elden Ring freedom. The Lands Between aren’t just open—they’re wild. No level scaling, no quest logs, no guidance beyond the faint glow of a grace point flickering in the distance. And somehow, it works. Every ruin leads to something terrible, every cave leads to something worse, and every path that looks safe is probably lying.
The map is deceptive at first, revealing only a fraction of its full scope until players start finding elevators to entire underground cities or accidentally teleporting into hellish corners of the world they weren’t ready for. FromSoftware didn’t just create a world that can be explored in any order—they made it so each direction feels like a legitimate decision, not a checklist. The sense of discovery comes with real risk, and that’s what makes it stick.
1 The Legend Of Zelda: Breath Of The Wild
Where The Mountains Call And The Paraglider Answers
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
- Released
- March 3, 2017
WHERE TO PLAY
Few open-world games have redefined exploration like The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. From the very beginning, once Link steps out of the Shrine of Resurrection, everything visible is fair game—every mountain, forest, desert, and cliff. There are no artificial boundaries or story-gated zones, just physics-based freedom and a paraglider to abuse every vertical inch of Hyrule.
What sets Breath of the Wild apart isn’t just the ability to go anywhere, but the reward for doing so. Korok seeds, hidden shrines, and environmental puzzles litter the landscape, subtly guiding players without ever forcing them. Weather and stamina become more than just survival mechanics—they’re navigation challenges. It's a world that invites wandering not as a detour, but as the whole point.
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The following games may not be Zelda: Breath Of The Wild, but they will certainly scratch the same itch as Nintendo's open-world masterpiece.