While navigating this vast space, the player collects documents that reveal the stories of its previous inhabitants and the passing away of civilization; a key theme of the game is the potential for nature to outlast human activity.

Although the player must obtain food and manage the risks of cold and injuries, these aspects of the gameplay were designed to be less challenging than in most survival games, to support a more relaxed mood and slower pace of exploration.

While reviewers mostly appreciated its distinctive graphical style (which drew comparisons with Proteus) and its narrative, some criticised the gameplay as too slow-paced or repetitive.

The extensive world map encompasses multiple biomes including forests, mountains and the remains of ruined cities, and walking across it requires hours of real time.

[4] The game features a minimal HUD[5] with small icons to indicate status effects such as hunger and illness,[6] and most interaction is managed as part of the backpack interface.

Growing conflicts and social breakdown culminated in "the Fall", a period around 2110 in which the destruction of Beacons by extremists left city-dwellers to die or flee to surviving cities, themselves diminishing in number and hostile towards refugees.

In one series of letters, a Sennin named Triya reveals that she came to Washington long after the Fall in search of a cure for Beacon dependence for the world's few remaining cities; she eventually found this in Victoria, but its effectiveness is unknown.

[12] The lack of polygons and textures for in-game objects was originally intended to allow computers to render the game's expansive landscapes, but Maxon decided that this minimalist style was actually more attractive.

[18] Video game developer Jack de Quidt wrote a positive review for Rock, Paper, Shotgun, expressing his enjoyment of both the impressionistic graphics and the experience of navigation, "treating an open world as a great spatial puzzle".

He viewed the narrative as interesting from a philosophical and science-fictional viewpoint, finding an implied connection between the theme of immortality and the player character's own ability to survive seemingly lethal events.

However, the review took a less favorable view of the mechanics of discovering documents, arguing that this was over-repetitive and detracted from the intrinsic pleasure of exploration in an overjustification effect.

In contrast to de Quidt, Haulica complained that discovering the narrative required excessive, tedious wandering, and also that the limited survival aspects provided insufficient additional reason for engagement.

Haulica considered that although views of distant scenery could be effective, the minimal visual style and the "very limited and drab color palette" were generally unappealing.