Traveler

You wake in your spaceship, sluggish. What are you here for? You can't remember. Your ship's not in the best shape; you've got to explore the stars. You may not have enough power in your engines to blast off once you land...

Traveler is a small, procedurally generated exploration game, with randomly generated descriptions of the stars. The individual planets are sometimes quite shallowly implemented, but Sandel uses each star as a pacing device. As you travel through the stars, your ship's stats decline, giving a tension to Traveler. Sandel's writing is strongest, I think, as she describes what you, in your travels, have missed; thoughts of home occur at the strangest times.

Overall, Traveler feels like a much more sensible version of Porpentine's Ruiness - both are about travellers who never make meaningful connections in any one place, for whom travel is work, whose constant moving around alienates them from everyone around them. A melancholic work which nonetheless ends on a hopeful note.