Highlights
- Open-world games have become extremely popular, and some of them have incredible tropical settings built for players to roam freely and complete the game in a non-linear manner.
- Green Hell , Just Cause 2 , and Far Cry 3 are examples of open-world games that have successfully created immersive tropical environments for players to explore.
- These games offer a variety of experiences, from multiplayer ship battles and treasure hunting in Sea of Thieves to surviving a zombie apocalypse in Dead Island , showcasing the versatility and appeal of tropical open-world settings.
Open-world games have gained a huge foothold in the gaming industry over the past couple of decades. Starting as a novelty and becoming the norm for many major companies' biggest releases, all manner of incredible worlds have been built from the concept of letting players roam freely and complete the game in a non-linear manner.
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There are a lot of great game franchises out there that have yet to enter the open-world space.
However, one type of setting that isn’t used nearly as often as others is a tropical open world. Between survival games, RPGs, and other wilder styles of open-world games, there have been some truly fantastic settings created from this simple idea, producing delightful memories of sunny days spent roaming huge expanses.
7 Sea of Thieves
Metacritic Score: 69
Sea of Thieves
- Platform(s)
- Xbox Series X , Xbox Series S , Xbox One , PC
- Released
- March 20, 2018
- Developer(s)
- Rare
- Genre(s)
- Adventure
Set in a colorful, amazing tropical paradise featuring hundreds of islands to be visited, Sea of Thieves sets players on their ship in a multiplayer open world where they can run into other crews, skeleton fleets, krakens, and deadly storms. There is plenty of treasure to be found and all sorts of activities going on all the time.
Whether players prefer going on individual adventures in this beautiful world, where the ocean is particularly appealing, or if they want to get together a crew of their friends and engage in PvP battles, there is something in Sea Of Thieves for everybody.
6 Dead Island
Metacritic Score: 71
One of the best open-world experiences that lets players roam around a tropical island, Dead Island is a zombie game set on a beautiful island resort. Players get to choose one of several characters to awaken and try to make their way around the island while helping others survive. They can also join other players in their adventures.
With a huge catalog of missions, many interesting characters, and several different types of zombies to meet, players will have a perfect tropical action experience in Dead Island. Spending plenty of time at the beach, in a beautifully destroyed city, or even in a jungle, players can find the perfect tropical setting here and in its recently released sequel.
5 Green Hell
Metacritic Score: 78
There is a wealth of wonderful open-world survival games being released nowadays, and one of the very best is Green Hell, set in the tropical and terrifying Amazon Rainforest. Players have to survive by finding food, water, and shelter, in addition to keeping themselves healthy, even going so far as to introduce infections.
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The Amazon Rainforest is one of the most challenging places to live or even visit in the world. With the wealth of unknown species, local tribespeople, and the climate itself, it would be hugely difficult to survive any length of time without a huge volume of knowledge about the place, making Green Hell the ultimate tropical survival game, with a great open world for roaming.
4 The Touryst
Metacritic Score: 79
The Touryst
- Platform(s)
- PC , PS4 , PS5 , Switch , Xbox One , Xbox Series X , Xbox Series S
- Released
- November 14, 2019
- Developer(s)
- Shin'en Multimedia
- Genre(s)
- Adventure
An extremely fun adventure game with open-world-style exploration, The Touryst asks the question: what is it like for things to go totally wrong on holiday? A man accidentally ends up on an adventure exploring mysterious ruins in a short game that became immediately popular upon release on the Nintendo Switch.
The Touryst keeps players busy in a colorfully fun tropical environment, filling the relatively short runtime with plenty of puzzles, delightfully fun exploration, and several mini-games which make a perfectly fun adventure game for all ages, something which is a rarity in gaming today, the adventure game genre has fallen out of popularity.
3 Just Cause 2
Metacritic Score: 81
Just Cause 2
- Released
- March 23, 2010
- Developer(s)
- Avalanche Studios
- Genre(s)
- Open-World , Third-Person Shooter
Inspired by a mixture of previous action games, particularly open-world ones, Just Cause 2 managed to improve on many of the features from the first game, in addition to bringing a whole new environment to the series in the form of a fictional island called Panau, meant to be somewhere in maritime Southeast Asia.
There were several improvements from the previous game. The setting was a huge plus, but many mechanics were changed and added to so that the gunplay was better, and many of the tools, like the grappling hooks and parachutes, were greatly improved as well.
2 Assassin’s Creed 4: Black Flag
Metacritic Score: 88
Assassin's Creed 4: Black Flag
- Released
- October 29, 2013
- Developer(s)
- Ubisoft Montreal
- Genre(s)
- Action-Adventure , Open-World
The popular Assassin’s Creed franchise was filled with incredible locations, having already varied from the Holy Lands to Renaissance Italy and Civil War America before this entry, which took the eternal struggle between the Templars and Assassins to the West Indies, featuring major cities and a huge number of islands as well.
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The tropical setting was a massive change of pace for the franchise, as were the almost Sea of Thieves-like ship and ship combat features that were introduced. A great addition to a fantastic franchise, Black Flag allowed players huge freedom in a tropical paradise, which had some great historical accuracy to it.
1 Far Cry 3
Metacritic Score: 88
A franchise that is used to some fantastic open-world locations, Far Cry 3 is the very best example of the franchise bringing players into the shoes of a maniac attempting to take on a whole island by themselves. Far Cry 3 was set on the Rook Islands, meant to be a tropical archipelago led by pirate lord Vaas Montenegro.
The gameplay was very action-focused, and the setting of the islands, described as the second most important character in the game by the developers, was a huge part of what made this the most memorable entry in the long-running action franchise. The open world of the Rook Islands was a tropical paradise filled with death, giving players exactly the feeling that they’d hope for from a tropical action game.
