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.