journey (2012 video game)

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“Journey stands as a prime example of the truly remarkable things that can be done via this medium.” 10/10 – Giant Bomb “The mechanics are simple, but they establish a direct connection to the heart.” 10/10 – Gamespot “Journey's visual and sound design sets new standards for interactive entertainment. This alone makes it an extraordinary work, but it's the way that these aesthetic elements come together with beautifully subtle direction and storytelling to create a lasting emotional effect that elevates this to one of the very best games of our time.” 10/10 – The Guardian

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About This Game

System requirements.

• Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system
• OS: Windows 10
• Processor: Intel Core i3-2120 | AMD FX-4350
• Memory: 4 GB RAM
• Graphics: Nvidia GTS 450 | AMD Radeon HD 5750
• Storage: 4 GB available space

© 2012-2020 Sony Interactive Entertainment LLC. Journey is a trademark of Sony Interactive Entertainment LLC. Developed by thatgamecompany. Conversion development by Inline Assembly Ltd. Published by Annapurna Interactive.

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thatgamecompany

life’s companions

Experience the wonder in this anonymous adventure where you travel on a life’s passage, with the chance to connect with companions along the way.

a mysterious world

Alone and surrounded by miles of burning, sprawling desert, you soon discover the looming mountaintop is your goal. The passage will not be easy but this experience of a lifetime will help you discover who you are, what this place is, as you arrive at your purpose.

beautiful art and music

Soar above ruins and glide across sands as you explore the secrets of a forgotten civilization.  Featuring stunning visuals, haunting music, and unique online gameplay, Journey delivers an experience like no other.

The release of Journey attracted over 100+ industry awards and media accolades, with some naming the game as their ‘Game of The Year’ in 2012.

"A glorious, thoughtful, moving masterpiece"

- entertainment weekly, "mysterious and beautiful", "an incredible, emotional game", "one of the most amazing game experiences of my life", - gamesradar.

© 2012 Sony Interactive Entertainment LLC. Developed by thatgamecompany. Journey is a trademark of Sony Interactive Entertainment LLC.

Journey Wiki

Journey's 12th Anniversary Poster Winner! Congratulations Kbak! Join players around the world in celebration of Journey's 12th Anniversary fan event on March 13th!

• View history

Journey is an adventure game developed by ThatGameCompany and released by Sony Computer Entertainment in 2012 on PlayStation 3, as a Sony Exclusive title.

Due to its ongoing success, it got ported to several platforms:

• See Release dates

Since the very start, the game had a very strong community, people that fell in love with the game and playing it all over again. Over the years, they discovered many interesting things and are still playing it. Journey is a very special game, it's best enjoyed "blind", with no knowledge about it before playing it for the first time.

The Journey effect [ ]

"According to Chen (one of the founders of TGC), the company focuses on creating video games that provoke emotional responses from players." [1]

You will be thrown into a scary, yet, wonderful new world, with no idea who you are or what you're doing, besides one singular goal.

Even worse: there is no guidance, no helpful hints to bail you out: you have to find out everything by yourself and make your way through the what seems like an endless desert.

The stunning visuals (best enjoyed on a big screen, played with a controller) and the Grammy nominated soundtrack will do their part to cause a wide variety of emotions.

Beware: Journey is a beautiful game, but it often manages to cause emotions like despair, confusion, fear or sadness too. This is part of the experience.

Journey is all about empathy and respect. Upon meeting a figure like you, you are forced to make decisions. Sometimes, they want to go further or go on an endless exploration. If both are stubborn, they will part ways.

Just like finding a new friend in life, you might walk for a while, lose contact or stay friends until the very end. You will enjoy the time spent together and probably respect each others flaws.

Journey is also a game about sand, cloth, and various creatures you meet on the way.

The more you play Journey you will discover slight differences or see things, that seem new. It may be hard to describe, but here are some expressions from longterm fans of Journey :

• Does this look different now?
• This never happened before.
• It's so scary.
• I have never seen this.
• It is a hard game. (meaning not only gameplay, often the game causes emotions and not all are "nice", just like experiences in life)
• I want to learn more about this.
• Interactive zen video. So relaxing.
• Everytime something new.
• It's so funny.

Journeys success continues through the years, it received over 100 awards. Several "Game of the Year", many BAFTA awards, the soundtrack got nominated for a Grammy (Best Score Soundtrack for Visual Media ) and so on.

Wikipedia link to awards: Journey (2012 video game), Reception .

Game support [ ]

This wiki does not provide technical support for Journey .

If you have any technical support questions or concerns, please contact platform support teams:

• PlayStation versions: Sony Computer Entertainment
• PC and iOS versions: [email protected]

As of mid-2021 it appears that technical support and updates have ceased from SCE and Annapurna Interactive

https://thatgamecompany.com/journey/

Trailer [ ]

Further reading [ ]

For further hints about approximate game length, bug warnings, settings etc. Read this Guide .

ThatGameCompany

• Homepage: https://thatgamecompany.com/journey/
• Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thatgamecompany

Annapurna Interactive

• Homepage http://annapurna.pictures/interactive/
• Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annapurna_Interactive

See also [ ]

• System requirements
• Guide: Your first Journey , general hints about setting, length etc, without saying more about the game itself. It will lead you to further guides and provide links to useful articles at the start of your journey through Journey .
• How to play guide for Journey
• Category: Gameplay Basics

References [ ]

• ↑ Wikipedia
• 2 How to play guide for Journey

• PS Plus required for online play
• Supports up to 2 online players with PS Plus
• Online play optional
• Remote Play supported
• PS4 Version DUALSHOCK 4 vibration

The critically-acclaimed title makes its debut on the PS4™ system. Explore the ancient, mysterious world of Journey as you soar above ruins and glide across sands to discover its secrets. Play alone or in the company of a fellow traveler and explore its vast world together. Featuring stunning visuals and a Grammy-nominated musical score, Journey delivers a breathtaking experience like no other.

Great PlayStation games to relax and de-stress

De-stress, unwind and escape to new worlds with a rundown of some of PlayStation’s best games to soothe your mind and body.

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OpenCritic Rating

Top Critic Average

Critics Recommend

Journey Media

JOURNEY | 10 Year Anniversary Trailer

JOURNEY | PC Launch Trailer

Journey Launch Trailer I Coming July 21 I PS4 Exclusive

Critic Reviews for Journey

Three years later, Journey remains one of the most powerful games in recent memory.

Read full review

Metro GameCentral

Less is most definitely more in this beautifully understated co-op adventure, that dares you to make sense of its enigmatic voyage.

Game Informer

An artistic tour de force of limited interactive complexity

Journey has only improved with time, earning its status as one of the best games ever created.

Game Revolution

At the end of the campaign, you'll most likely be surprised to find that the one person who hung out with you was really three, or four, or more. What's more surprising was that seeing all the people I'd come into contact with hits me emotionally. I don't know them, but I 'know' them.

Hobby Consolas

‎If you are one of those who did not play it on PS3, you have before you a unique adventure of its kind, of those that without words says it all. And if you have it, thanks to the Cross-Buy you can enjoy it on PS4 without costs and with visual improvements. The remasters like that, YES.‎

Review in Spanish | Read full review

Firing up Journey on PS4 is a delight. It's so gorgeous and fluid in 1080p and 60 frames-per-second. Even though that's really the only thing different about it, it's a wonderful experience.

‎A beautiful journey, unparalleled in the history of the video game.‎

OpenCritic Coverage

Journey is now available for steam, comes with a free game.

Journey has been released on Steam, and comes with a free game when purchased Read more

Sony Has Announced the Stay At Home Initiative

Sony has announced the Stay At Home Initiative, through which they will give out free games Read more

Journey is Making Its Way to Steam

It has been announced that Journey will be making its way over to Steam later this year Read more

• International edition
• Australia edition
• Europe edition

Journey – review

A long with LittleBigPlanet developer Media Molecule, thatgamecompany is one of the best examples of Sony's willingness to invest in new ideas. It's a studio focussed on making games that resonate emotionally, drawing on its staff's background in multimedia art. So far the studio has made Cloud, flOw and Flower: Cloud is a wonderfully relaxing flight through blue skies and drifting cumulus; flOw lets you be a micro-organism in the primordial ooze, munching others as you float; Flower is a gorgeous if rather heavy-handed meditation on the relationship between the urban and the natural in which you literally play a cloud of petals. They are beautiful, whimsical creations, but they have always stopped short of profundity.

These are all games that have tried to push the boundaries of what interactive entertainment can express, but Journey tries harder – and Journey succeeds. Journey is profound, or at least it can be. The studio describes it as an interactive parable, the story of a lone traveller and their path through life told in the form of a voyage that starts in the vast expanses of a desert and ends … well, to tell you how it ends would spoil it. You think you know what Journey is going to be about after the first five minutes, but you don't. I came to it expecting something charming, visually stunning and perhaps even mildly edifying. I left thinking that it may well be, in many ways, the best video game I have ever played.

You play a traveller swaddled in red robes, beginning atop a desert sand dune with a view of a shining mountain on the horizon. You're given no direction; instead you're guided by the natural impulse to move towards that looming, distant beacon. Control is intentionally simple and unobtrusive; you can only walk, jump and sing, but Journey still crafts some astounding scenarios from those bare gameplay ingredients. It has you surfing down sand dunes in the fading light, scaling towers, flying on the wind and cowering in underground ruins as you slowly uncover what could have happened to the civilisation that must have once lived there.

It's steeped in vague religious imagery; shrines, billowing robes, a solitary desert setting that can't help but evoke the Old Testament from time to time. Gentle puzzles and hidden scraps of material that extend your fluttering scarf and let you stay airborne for longer provide the only traditional gameplay elements to be found in this adventure. Instead, the enjoyment comes from inhabiting and admiring its world.

You will rarely play a game that makes you feel so much like you're actually there as Journey does. There is not the slightest inconsistency in its art direction, and this, together with extremely clever sound design and natural signposting, absorbs you in the game's world entirely. High dunes act as boundaries, and your eye is always instinctively drawn towards where you're supposed to be headed next, whether through lighting, camera direction or. At no point was I pulled out of Journey's world through clumsy design or a single frame of unnatural animation.

It helps that Journey doesn't overstretch itself; it's about 90 minutes long, which is enough time to get you absorbed in its premise but not enough time for you to start questioning the substance behind its beauty. A lack of nuanced gameplay mechanics is hardly a problem for a game of this length. But the thing that really energises Journey, the thing that makes you want to play it through over and over again, is that you don't play it alone.

From time to time, you'll see another traveller huddled down into their robes just off in the distance. Journey has ambient multiplayer that drops people into your game from time to time. You can either interact with them – by singing, or running around in circles together, by sticking with each other through to the game's conclusion and supporting each other – or leave them be to wander off into the sands again. Journey's emotional impact, which is not inconsiderable when playing along, is multiplied exponentially by sharing the experience with a stranger. It manages more meaningful communication with one button than most can with endless text and voice.

There are probably some players for who the trick won't work, and for who this journey will be a beautiful but ultimately hollow one – aesthetically stunning, but perhaps not meaningful. For me, though, Journey has moved me as much as any other piece of art or entertainment has.

Journey's visual and sound design sets new standards for interactive entertainment. This alone makes it an extraordinary work, but it's the way that these aesthetic elements come together with beautifully subtle direction and storytelling to create a lasting emotional effect that elevates this to one of the very best games of our time.

• PlayStation

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10 years later, the best video game about nothing still lives up to the hype

A simple, beautiful adventure brought harmony to PS3 players around the world.

Seinfeld is famously a show about nothing. Obviously, there’s content on the show, but at the time of its release, every ’90s sitcom had some sort of gimmick. A show about funny people just being friends went against commercial trends. These same trends stifle gaming creators too. Are there any games that broke with conventional wisdom? Did time prove them right? Yes and yes — and one of the most noteworthy instances of this just turned 10.

Journey from thatgamecompany took the world by surprise when it was released on March 13, 2012 because it was, on the surface, about nothing. There’s no dialogue, no clear plot, and no token objectives. Yet the atmosphere and level design are so compelling that the game won the hearts of millions (and its fair share of GOTY awards, too).

Journey broke through during a deeply formulaic era of gaming. A look at the top-selling games of 2012 reveals nothing but 2s, 3s, 4s, and annual franchise staples. You could set your market forecast by Call of Duty , Madden, and others. There was Battlefield 3 , Elder Scrolls V , and Mass Effect 3 .

And then there was Journey .

Indie gaming had been steadily gaming Steam (pun intended) since the late 2000sm and releases like Minecraft and Braid showed the potential for well-developed, innovative titles. Along with Steam, Xbox Live Arcade became an important marketplace for indie developers.

Journey takes place in a series of sandswept ruins.

Sony didn’t have the indie support it does now but knew enough to let talented creators experiment by thinking outside the box. Journey was easy to underestimate. There’s no dialogue, no clever plot twists, no shooting or looting or gold. But it’s a shining example of how pure design can shatter expectations for what games should be to show us what they could be, instead.

The magic of Journey is in its aesthetic. Players begin the game in a sweeping desert landscape littered with ruins. The only objective is from a brief cutscene showing someone, something off in the distance dominated by a huge mountain.

So you move. And this is where Journey begins to hook you immediately. It just feels so good . Something about gliding over the wind-whipped sand dunes and skittering up crumbling staircases feels soft and precise. You float and fly along with one of the greatest original soundtracks of all time.

This was the first video game soundtrack to get nominated for a Grammy, and Austin Wintory’s orchestral genius remains a gold standard to this day. (If you’re a hardcore audiophile gamer, the OST is getting a vinyl re-release from iam8bit to celebrate the occasion). In many ways, Journey affirms the power of music as a narrative device, so don’t play it on shitty headphones.

Journey ’s OST is an all-timer.

Players also found meaning in the engaging, but minimalist, multiplayer. You don’t do matchmaking or lobbies. Instead, you encounter other players at random and travel from discovery to discovery together.

In choosing emotional depth over violence , Journey forged thousands of core memories for gamers who had never experienced anything together besides conflict and competition. Conventional multiplayer pits gamers against each other, Journey puts them together instead.

Journey is available on PC and the PlayStation Store, where it's currently on sale .

• Video Games
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• Cast & crew
• User reviews

A robed figure in a desolate world undertakes a journey towards a distant, glowing mountain. A robed figure in a desolate world undertakes a journey towards a distant, glowing mountain. A robed figure in a desolate world undertakes a journey towards a distant, glowing mountain.

• Jenova Chen
• 17 User reviews
• 21 Critic reviews
• 19 wins & 12 nominations total

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Did you know

• Trivia The soundtrack has been nominated as the Best Score Soundtrack for Visual Media for the 2013 Grammy Awards, the first video game soundtrack to be nominated for that category.
• Connections Featured in Game on!: Felicia Day also Featuring Draw Something (2012)

User reviews 17

• Jan 10, 2017
• March 13, 2012 (United States)
• United States
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• See more company credits at IMDbPro

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Video Game / Journey (2012)

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Journey is a video game for the PlayStation 3 created by thatgamecompany . You play as a nameless robed figure who is crossing the desert to reach a mountain in the distance. As the game progresses, you pass through several unique environments and ruins, uncovering more of the game's story as you go. It's something of an Adventure Game with light Platform Game elements.

Your character has only two real abilities. The first is singing, which radiates a sound wave proportional to how long you hold down the button — this is used to activate or attract various objects. The second is jumping, which allows you to go sailing through the air — this ability uses energy, which can be replenished by touching the floating bits of cloth you encounter throughout the game. The maximum amount of storable energy, indicated by the length of your character's trailing scarf, can be increased by collecting glowing symbols.

One of the game's main selling points is its unique form of multiplayer. During the game, you may encounter another player, whom you may travel with if you wish. However, unlike most multiplayer games, you can't see the other player's name or other information except for a unique icon that appears above their head when they sing, which is the only real way to communicate. There is no text or voice chat in the game, so you must rely entirely on your in-game abilities to work with your partner. However the game does list the handles of all the other players you encountered in the session during the credit, so you have a chance to send them a heartfelt “thank you” after the session.

Decidedly not related to the rock band of the same name , an arcade game based on the band released in 1983, a video game Journey released in 1989 on various home computers or several films named Journey .

Compare and contrast LostWinds , which is practically its WiiWare and iOS equivalent, Star Sky for Wii U and also on iOS , ABZÛ , which was developed by some of the same people who created Journey , and Sky: Children of the Light , the next game from thatgamecompany.

This game provides examples of:

• 11th-Hour Superpower : After the Ancestors revive you near the end of chapter 7, you regenerate a maxed out scarf/energy meter. You'll also periodically become bathed in golden light and gain the ability to truly fly during the Summit section.
• Adventure Game : The game is all about how the player chooses to explore while heading towards the distant split peaked mountain.
• After the End : The robed beings' civilization was destroyed in a civil war.
• Alas, Poor Villain : The Guardian war machines were very likely engineered out of the big cloth whale creatures you meet in the Temple, programmed to hunt. And some, especially the one that hunts the player character in the snow field, sound positively mournful- probably because, with most of the creatures they hunt being dead, they're actually starving .
• Alliterative Title : The second area of the game is called the Broken Bridge.
• All the Worlds Are a Stage : Two levels near the end do this. One is a vertical ascent with each 'floor' making you use the different kinds of cloth creatures you met in each previous level, in the same order. The relevant part of the journey is depicted as a wall glyph on each floor. The entire series of glyphs is then displayed in narrative order as a flashback of your journey during the cutscene. The very final level does this again (adding a section for the previous example itself) and also imitates the environment of each level in succession, but subtly enough that it's not so obvious.
• Androcles' Lion : Some of the cloth creatures, once you've freed them, will return the favor by helping you reach an otherwise inaccessible area (or an entirely new level).
• Animate Inanimate Object : Banners and cloth you'll come across largely resemble marine life, with rays, jellyfish, kelp and so on moving like the air was an ocean.
• Ambiguous Gender : The robed beings really don't have any identifiable sexual characteristics.
• The first four times you complete the game, a new line of embroidery is added to the embellishments on your cloak .
• Collecting all the symbols unlocks a white cloak, which starts out with a longer scarf that recharges automatically when you're on the ground .
• Anti-Frustration Features : All sections of the game are playable regardless of the length of your scarf, since you can miss certain opportunities to grow it, can lose pieces of it in certain encounters, or simply hop to that chapter from the Hub Level .
• April Fools' Day : thatgamecompany put up a teaser for a "Rocket Death Match" DLC, which of course goes against the entire point of the game.

• Ascended Glitch : During a phase in which thatgamecompany had trouble getting the ending levels to properly resonate with playtesters, one test ended prematurely when a glitch caused the game to seem like it was over right after you die in the snowstorm . The playtester found this false ending so profoundly moving it brought him to tears; this inspired tgc to put in significant extra effort to turn the actual ending into something equally moving.
• Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence : Your character in the ending, and apparently what happened to the robed beings who survived the civil war and made the journey.
• Beautiful Void : And how. Even the mere sand itself is a thing of beauty.
• Benevolent Architecture : The levels were designed with this in mind: just head toward the most prominent object in the area and you're probably going in the right direction.
• Big Door : Most levels end with a huge gate opening, leading to a long straight corridor.
• Book Ends : The last shot of the credits montage is actually the start-of-game screen, complete with "Press Start to begin a new Journey".
• Border Patrol : On the open levels, if you try to stray off the map, wind blows you back.
• Breather Episode : The temple level offers a much needed break between the stressful underground and the harrowing mountain.
• Broken Bridge : This is the name of the second area of the game, which, appropriately, centers on a long stone bridge which has fallen except for a few remaining sections. Progressing requires freeing scarf creatures, which will repair the bridge using magic fabric. Though there is a trophy for finishing the level without filling in all the bridge sections.
• Civil War : The cutscene murals reveal that the precursor civilization you're exploring the remnants of, fell due to a massive whitecloak-versus-whitecloak war over scarce resources.
• Compilation Re-release : The Journey Collector's Edition , released August 28, 2012, includes Journey , flOw , and Flower , as well as three unreleased mini-games, videos, commentaries, and other fun extras.
• Cultural Chop Suey : The majority of the buildings have Mughal (that is, mixed Hindu/Islamic) designs, while the cloth dragons and the ending level have strong east Asian influences.
• Crossing the Desert : The beginning chapters consist of a desert landscape—one that simply places the player in the middle of nowhere, pointed toward a distant mountain split by a crevice full of light. Your objective, whole and entire, is to reach the mountain. The player characters are completely swathed in robes and don't seem to need supplies, fortunately.
• Darkest Hour : At the end of the penultimate chapter, your character is left without a scarf, the mountain is more distant than it was at the start of the chapter, and it slowly fades away from view as the whiteout intensifies.
• Death Mountain : The seventh chapter sees you climbing the frozen mountain you've been making your way toward. It's by far the most difficult and harrowing level, with new threats like the freezing cold and fierce winds and old ones like the Guardian returning even deadlier.
• Desert Punk : More magic than Sci-fi, but the ruins you come across make the setting feel like this sometimes, especially after finding working War Machines and learning that the deserted lands you have been traveling across are of the After the End variety.
• Determinator : The player character, who relentlessly approaches the distant mountain. Taken to an extreme in chapter 7, when you keep on walking toward the summit even though you're slowly freezing to death.
• Deus ex Machina : The Traveler and any accompanying companion would have frozen to death in the snowstorm, if not for the timely intervention of the six spirits of the Ancestors who give them enough energy to reach the Summit. Before that point, there is no indication that the Ancestors can interact with the Travelers beyond merely showing them images.
• Developer's Foresight : If you play through the game without a companion and then one joins you later, the mural that you see at the end of chapter six will only show one red-cloaked person until it pans to the level where your friend joined, then two will show from there until the endgame. The reverse is also true—if you lose your partner in the Temple (for instance, they go back down for bonuses and you don't), the mural will show you partnered for the sections where you were together... and facing the winds alone at the end. If one or both players is wearing a White Cloak, the mural will depict them wearing white instead of the default red .
• Diegetic Interface : While you're never in any danger of dying, your scarf serves as an indicator of your overall energy, determining both how long you're able to glide and your health; It decreases in length when you suffer through the blizzard (which ultimately kills you) and whenever you're mauled by the guardians .
• For most of the game the peak of the High Mountain looks a bit like an upside down camel toe. The theme of rebirth and walking through the peak at the end of the game reinforce the yonic imagery.
• On a less sexual note, the ancient civilization's dependency on the red cloth mirroring modern society's dependency on petroleum. Doesn't help that you're in a desert.
• Dramatic Thunder : This can be heard near the end of the penultimate chapter.
• Drop-In-Drop-Out Multiplayer : Sometimes you might not even realize that someone else is around until you see your screen glow because of their singing, and it can be easy to leave another player's game by accident. Even if both players exit a level together, that isn't a total guarantee that you'll be with the same person on the other side.
• Dying Dream : A possible interpretation of the events that occur at the end of the game.
• Earn Your Happy Ending : While there is no particular fail state to this game, keeping your companion with you to the end is a task worth pursuing.
• Easter Egg : There's a very special flower hidden in the pink desert in the third stage of the game, and a creature from flOw in the Temple level. Finding them nets you trophies.
• Extremely Short Timespan : The entire journey seems to take place over about 24 hours. It's morning when you start walking toward the mountain, by the time you reach the slopes the moon is up, and when you finally reach the summit after dying and being resurrected , the sun has risen again. Or it could be considered as two days, counting the return trip of the "spirit" seen during the credits, which also takes a day and a night; so that when you're ready for the next journey, it's morning again.
• Eye Lights Out : Your character's Glowing Eyes fade as they freeze to death.
• Fade to Black : Happens at the end of the fourth and fifth chapters, as you're walking through whatever gate has just opened up before you.
• Fade to White : Happens at the end of every chapter except the fourth and fifth ones.
• Fatal Forced March : The penultimate level sends the protagonist on a desperate attempt to climb the mountain seen throughout the game: it's a long, brutal slog disrupted by strong gusts of wind and patrolled by hostile Magitek , and it's made all the more arduous by the fact that your usual gliding powers are disabled by the cold. Worse still, the final leg of the journey takes you through a blizzard, and with the storm surrounding you, your only choice is to continue walking. It ends with you freezing to death ... only to be brought back to life and allowed to continue the journey with your powers enhanced.
• Five-Second Foreshadowing : Looking to the right as you enter the second part of the Underground Passage, you can see a huge, moving machine through a latticework. Something is still working down here. There are also some kind of steam vents working up above, adding to the sinister atmosphere. Then you come across a still-flickering War Machine head. A few hundred feet later, a Guardian jumps out of the sand at a ribbon creature.
• You know those comets you can see periodically throughout the game? Those are other travelers who have reached the end of the game. All of the ones you see are scripted, but you see them at the same points where it shows a "player" during the end credits.
• Similarly, the Ancestors that appear to you in the game's cutscenes are just telling you a story with pictures, until you get to the penultimate level. The cutscene is you looking at a panorama of all the places you've been so far—then the camera holds for a long, lingering shot of what looks like you (and your travel companion, if you have one) attempting to scale the mountain you've been walking towards... and failing. Oh, and speaking of things you see throughout the game, all those stone markers are probably graves .
• Game-Breaking Bug : It's possible for the game to simply crash at certain points, and given the short nature of the game, you'll likely have to simply start over.
• Glowing Eyes : Your character has these, as do the Ancestors, though yours are white and the white figures' are blue.
• Go into the Light : The game ends with the player character(s) walking into a bright light, possibly to be reincarnated or join the afterlife.
• Green Aesop : According to the historical murals you are shown, the precursor civilization exploited the natural resource available to them (the cloth), replacing some kind of bushes with cityscapes, until there was so little remaining that it caused a civil war which toppled their society, and the land turned to desert.
• Gusty Glade : Much of the mountain area is crisscrossed with strong winds that will blow your character either back or to the side, depending on the level.
• Hell Is That Noise : A Guardian on the hunt for you sounds like some mechanical hybrid of an attack sub, a 747, and an angry whale. The absolute worst thing is that you often can't see it, because you're busy hiding.
• Here We Go Again! : Implied in the ending, when the ascended player character returns to the desert where the game began. Also Book Ends .
• Heroic Mime : The characters are speechless , apart from their various chirps.
• Highly Visible Landmark : Exaggerated. In the game's opening, you awaken in an endless desert landscape with nothing but a solitary mountain in the distance, which becomes your unstated goal to reach.
• Hub Level : In the tutorial level, the six alcoves contain teleporters to the six chapters which will unlock once you've beaten the game once.
• Interfaith Smoothie : The game utilises several religious symbols, some specific, such as a niqab or a Shinto shrine, some pantheistic, such as a holy mountain, to gently strum our Western religious sensibilities without tying them to a religion we would necessarily know anything about.
• Invisible Wall : While later stages take place in confined areas, the beginning areas seem like a never-ending desert. Players are kept inside the boundaries by wind picking up the closer to the edge they get, first slowing them down, then blowing them back across the invisible boundary.
• It's the Journey That Counts : Perhaps a main theme of the game, appropriate considering its title and implicit in the ending .
• Jump Scare : Each of the two War Machines awakened in the Underground Passage suddenly roars to life when you get close. It's especially unexpected the first time, when its appearance shatters the subterranean calm of the preceding section. (For bonus points, the first one jumps out right in front of a frozen Guardian whose eyes are ominously flickering, which the player is probably expecting to move or attack them.)
• Light Is Good : The mountain you're heading toward has a glowing peak, and the energy you use to fly sends off light .
• Light Is Not Good : On the other hand, in the underground level it becomes essential to stay out of the War Machines' searchlights to keep them from spotting you.
• Look on My Works, Ye Mighty, and Despair : The ruins and trapped cloth creatures you find throughout the game are the result of the fall of the advanced ancient White Cloak civilization after they wiped themselves out during a war over the red cloth they grew dependent on .
• Lost Superweapon : The Guardians which destroyed the civilization. Some are still active.
• Lost Technology : The harnessing of energy through the cloth creatures, which the precursors had mastered and which your character rediscovers throughout the game.
• Minimalism : Part of what makes this game so beautiful and helps make finding anything (like easter eggs, cloth creatures, or another player to journey with) feel so rewarding.
• Moment of Silence : The end of the penultimate chapter slowly turns silent as your own life fades away.
• Mood Motif : Certain musical instruments heard in the game are associated with various events, with the cello mainly representing the player character. For an example, bass flute is for the white figure seen at the end of most chapters. Certain instruments play only when you are with a companion.
• Mr. Exposition : When you activate the shrine at the end of each level, an Ancestor will show you a visual representation of historical events.
• New Game Plus : Starting a new game with the White Robe .
• No Antagonist : The only enemies you can find are the Guardians, and even they can't really qualify as antagonists.
• Not Quite Flight : The character's scarf power (when charged) allows them to flap upward several times, after which they can glide.
• Off-into-the-Distance Ending : The game ends with the player character (and any companions) walking slowly away from you until they disappear into a bright, blinding light .
• One-Woman Wail : The credits music, provided by Lisbeth Scott.
• One-Word Title : In keeping with the game's general minimalism .
• Oppose What You Suffered : The various cloth creatures you encounter used to be used to power the machinery and engines of war of the Ancients. When you free some of these creatures from the machinery they are trapped in, they will insist on leading you to other entrapped cloth creatures so you can free them as well.
• The Phoenix : A possible interpretation of the characters is that they are a reference to the mythical bird, considering the cycle of rebirth they seem to undergo every time you beat the game , not to mention that their clothes are red or white with yellow designs. This may be reinforced by the fact that red is the "coldest" color of natural fire while white is the "hottest", which fits with how White Robes have more energy than red robes.
• Pilgrimage : The game has robed figures traveling toward a mountain in the distance which is implied to be some sort of holy site. Along the way, they stop at shrines where they are given further knowledge by the spirits of their ancient ancestors.
• Platform Game : Has some elements of this. Gameplay often involves using your fleeting scarf powers and the fabric around you to progress steadily higher.
• Player Data Sharing : Subverted. The glowing symbols that can be seen floating above the environments look like previous players' souls/symbols returning to the beginning from the top of the mountain, as happens to your own at the end of the game , especially since other players can actually accompany you if you play online, but careful observation reveals that those symbols are always the same and are essentially static features of the respective levels.
• Power Glows : The energy used to fly seems to be made of light, as is the liquid version you fill the temple up with (which later reappears in pools and "waterfalls" at the summit) .
• Precursors : The White Robes are implied to be this to the Red Robes, which according to the murals were created after the fall of the White Robes. They're named "Ancestors" by the art book.
• Pride Before a Fall : The murals show the white robed ancestors mastering their scarf-based technology and rising to the top of the natural order... before the tragic fall of their civilization.
• Progressive Instrumentation : The Temple level is a tower, which you ascend by activating light emitters at its core, one floor at a time. Each time you light up a floor, additional instruments join the background music, starting from complete silence at the start of the level and going to the full orchestra by the time you reach the top.
• Ragnarök Proofing : Mostly averted. The vast majority of the buildings encountered in the game are in a visible state of disrepair. The still-active Guardians are the exception to this rule.
• Recurring Riff : A certain motif is played throughout the game.
• Red Eyes, Take Warning : How you can tell you're about to be viciously savaged by a Guardian. Their searchlight beams turn red (and inescapable) when they spot you .
• Reincarnation : Implied. After you finish the game and fly back over all the areas you've explored while the credits roll, your star alights on the first hill you climbed, and you're given the option to start the game again. This could just be another wayfarer making their way to the mountain, but the extra line of embroidery adorning your cloak the second, third, and fourth times through suggests that you're still the same being.
• Rewatch Bonus : When going from the First Confluence to the Bridge area, sharp-eyed players will spot the figure of another traveler in the tunnel, far ahead of them. The figure is always there, not an actual player but a hint of the possibility you will meet others on the road ahead.
• Sand Is Water : Played around with. Sometimes, the sand acts like sand. At other times, you can surf across it like water as it glistens and ripples, and in the second and third levels it streams over cliffs exactly like waterfalls. The use of marine animal styles—schools of fish, dolphins, jellyfish, and whales—for the cloth creatures reinforces this, with the "dolphins" frequently jumping in and out of the sand like ocean waves. All this is particularly evident in the underground level, where greenish-blue lighting filters in from above, and dust motes float through the light like tiny bubbles. Your character's flight abilities look more like swimming in this environment.
• Scare Chord : When you encounter the first Guardian that comes to life .
• Scarf of Asskicking : No violence so not asskicking , but it can grow to roughly four times the length of the character and it lets you glide for massive amounts of space. This also depends on if you chose to begin your journey with a White Robe . At a certain point (just after you are revived by the Ancestors) , you are given the power to fly , and turn into pure light .
• Scenery Porn : Massive desert with gorgeous ruins and realistic cloth, sand and lighting effects? Yes please. The cutscenes and pathways are carefully arranged to make sure you're treated to a variety of vistas.
• Science Fantasy : Besides the beautiful sand that submerged the world, glyphs, magical cloth, and the impaired buildings, technology is uncommon at most. You glide using the energy bundled in your scarf, and singing near large pieces of cloth can release "cloth creatures" from the machines'/ Guardians' remnants. Glyphs and confluences teach you the history of a civilization started by your ancestors. The reason the game takes place after the apocalypse is the machines powered by energy from red cloth were used in a massive civil war .
• Screw Destiny : If you haven't found a partner or lost them before the end of the 5th level the cutscene will show you braving the blizzard alone (again) , but you can still find a new partner in the next level.
• Sentient Phlebotinum : The cloth creatures you use to progress through the game behave like animals.
• If you have enough cloth power, there are a few sections you can bypass without dealing with the puzzles. Of particular note is the broken bridge early in the game, which normally requires releasing enough cloth creatures to form a bridge between the sections. If you have the white cape, you can simply fly between the sections. This gets you an achievement.
• If you know the trick, it's actually possible to ascend out of the ceiling of the underground passage and walk along the top of the level. That's right, it has a roof. You can drop back through the roof at another point at the end of the level, without once encountering a single War Machine. The same is true of level seven, where you can climb over the top of the mountain range and bypass the level (and the Guardians) almost all the way to the beginning of the death march to the Mountain itself.
• Shifting Sand Land : The first four levels all take place in a variation on this setting, albeit less generic than most examples, since it's the main setting for the game: a hot, vast desert full of dunes and ancient ruins.
• Shadowed Face, Glowing Eyes : The main character wears red robes and has glowing white eyes underneath them.
• Silence Is Golden : No spoken dialogue ever occurs. It just isn't needed. The only written words in the entire game are the options menu, the title screen, and the ending credits, while the only spoken words are part of the ending song "I Was Born for This", which is in multiple languages and hard to decipher or understand without knowing the lyrics and sources.
• Slide Level : "The Descent" level sees you dropped onto a mountain slope to sand-surf to the bottom at high speed (with a short break in the middle). If you manage to find a flat surface, you'll discover that said speed is actually artificially boosted, as the devs surreptitiously apply constant forward force to your character's physics model so you keep sliding forward and downward.
• Socialization Bonus : It is possible to complete the game on your own but the entire game is obviously designed to be played with an anonymous Companion over the net. Sticking together makes many stages easier, since you can endlessly replenish each other's energy , especially the final trek up the mountain, where your scarf gradually loses power in the cold without a companion to cuddle with.
• Temple of Doom : Averted. The Temple level is a totally safe Breather Level between the dangerous Underground Passage and Mountain.
• Terminally Dependent Society : The scarcity of red banners, which were used as an energy source, started the civilization-ending war.
• Theme-and-Variations Soundtrack : The most of the songs in Journey have just one central motif.
• The Tower : One of the murals shows an Ancestor atop a tall tower, representing the hubris of the white-robe civilization before their decline .
• Unexpected Gameplay Change : Part of chapter 5 consists of a Stealth-Based Mission in which you have to sneak through a tunnel being patrolled by Guardians. You'll repeat this exercise in chapter 7, this time hiding in the husks of dead Guardians as live ones pass overhead. If one sees you, it'll grab and toss you a long ways and tear off part of your scarf, reducing your energy meter.
• Unwanted Assistance : An interesting example, in that it's not only perpetrated by other players but is almost certainly done without malice: the second chapter features a bridge which, if crossed without repairing it completely, will reward a trophy. Unfortunately some nice person will often see you 'struggling' and take pity on you by fixing the bridge section you obviously didn't see, undermining the whole endeavour.
• Variable Mix : A few musical instruments are added to some of the songs when playing with another player.
• You can fill your partner's energy gauge by singing or by walking very close to them. In chapter 7, when the extreme cold constantly drains your energy, you can still replenish it by the latter method, like you're huddling together for warmth. How sweet!
• At the end of the game, the usernames of your companions are listed, and it's become common for players to send messages of thanks to their companions after playing the game. Players on Steam even started a thread on the game's forums to do just that.
• Some clever gamers have devised another method of communication besides singing. It involves tracing in the bit of snow just before the end of the journey . The most common symbol? A heart.
• As in many MMOs, even without chat, players commonly jump up and down, run in circles and have their characters vocalize to indicate the presence of collectible items for others who may still be searching for them. It's also par to show off tricks used to get certain ultra-rare achievements.
• War Is Hell : Played with . After a long and quite literal descent you're informed of your ancestors' apocalyptic conflict by the gloomy and oppressive subterranean level, which also contains the first appearance of the guardians , the game's only source of the scary.
• World of Symbolism : Yes, you're allowed to interpret the story. Unfortunately, many interpretations are bleak, leading most gamers to think that the primary symbols allude to our own real-life Crapsack World, and our dependence on natural resources .
• The World Is Just Awesome : Many areas in the game appear to exist solely to make you sit back in your chair with your mouth hanging open.

Alternative Title(s): Journey

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