Carto

• Title — Carto • Developer — Sunhead Games • Publisher — Humble Games • Director — Lee-Kuo Chen • Composer — Eddie Yu • Engine — Unity • Released — October 27, 2020 • Genre — Puzzle, adventure • Modes — Single-player

Carto is a top-down puzzle adventure game. The player assumes the role of a young girl named Carto, who is separated from her grandmother, a cartographer by profession, during a violent storm. Washed ashore on an island in the aftermath of the storm, Carto must find a way out of her predicament and reunite with her grandmother. Each level of the game involves the player discovering and assembling different pieces of her map, which determines the geography of the surrounding area and progresses the game's narrative. By moving the pieces on the map, players also assist non-player characters (NPC's) with various tasks, such as locating their homes.

Carto was developed by Taiwanese independent studio Sunhead Games and published by Humble Games. The game's setting is inspired by several tribal cultures, which the developers incorporated as references. Lee-Kuo Chen from Sunhead Games cited the French artbook L'Atlas des géographes d'Orbae in particular for teaching him how to create a "believable world". When asked where the idea for the game mechanics came from, Chen noted that the tile-placement mechanic is inspired from the board game genre, especially Carcassonne. Chen said he revisited a concept for a video game which was summarized as "Like Carcassonne, but you are able to travel on the tile you place" within his design notebook, and decided to start prototyping because he thought it sounded promising. Humble Games unveiled the game in June 2020 with trailer. The game was released for Windows, PlayStation 4, Xbox One and Nintendo Switch on October 27, 2020.