I write this journal having finished my run in the 80 Days in 80 Days race that I organized. It took me 68 days, both in the real world and in the game. This experience, and watching so many people go through it with me, has given me a new appreciation for both the successes and the failings of this game.

Plunging several dozen people into it, many of whom had never played before, with other peoples' routes to compare themselves to has thrown into relief just how frustrating the 80 Days' foibles can be. There are a number of UI issues that create pure misery, especially in the context of a game with a constantly-ticking clock. Why is it to hard to tell that you can often purchase extra luggage? Why does clicking on the background boot you from the market? Why does the game allow you to pay good money to accelerate a departure you can't afford anyway?

Despite all of this, I'm still convinced this is a masterpiece. These are ultimately quibbles—they undeniably suck for first-time players, but they're easy enough to learn to avoid. The other thing this race has taught me is just how much variety is packed into the game. I've kept a map of everyone's routes, and it's crisscrossed all over the place. Every player took a unique route and had a unique experience, even on the same starting seed. It's a delight to see, and I wish there was any other game like it.

When I first played this just after it launched, I was blown away by how gracefully it interwove narrative and mechanical interests to inspire a feeling of wonder and infinite possibility. In the eight years since then, I've often compared it to other "modular narrative" games that also try use mechanics to allow players to guide themselves through story, and almost every time found 80 Days to come out on top.

Eight years is a long time, though, and I began to wonder if I might be remembering this game as more magnificent than it actually was—and thereby holding other games to not just a high standard, but an impossible one. So I decided to boot it up again on its 8th anniversary and see how well it held up.

Dear readers, it held up well. It really is true that almost nothing I've played since builds a self-guided narrative so effectively (with Sunless Skies being one notable exception). The formula itself isn't very complex: have many places that the player can traverse non-linearly; give each place (and each route between) them its own little micronarrative; create occasional connections between these narratives; and tie all of these into a simple resource system. But this simple formula gives rise to an incredible sense that every run is its own unique story told in tandem by the player and the game.