Carto
- Carto is an adorable, pleasant, and deceptively tricky game. As the cute titular cartographer, you embark on a globetrotting adventure to fill in pieces of your magical map while also chasing your equally adventurous grandmother. The journey gets tough at times, but ingenious puzzle-solving awaits.
- Carto is a charming adventure game wrapped around a unique, world-altering puzzle mechanic. Use this power to explore mysterious lands, help a quirky cast of characters, and guide Carto on.
I learned what a cartographer was thanks to video games (thanks, Halo) so perhaps it’s fitting that I enjoyed Carto so much. The Humble Games title is a nice departure from the next-gen console blitz of AAA games all reaching toward our ray tracing future, sure, but it’s also just a really satisfying puzzle game with some familiar but unique mechanics.
If you’ve ever played the board game Carcassonne, you mostly know how to play Carto. The adventure game has an explorable map you can wander aimlessly but is best parsed in square sections you can rearrange to discover new tiles and secrets. Each piece of the puzzle is different, and each side of these square is a type of land that matches up with and connects to others. Grass connects to grass, water connects to water and forest connects to forest. On and on. You can even move the tile Carto is standing on to shuffle yourself across lands easily, as long as everything lines up.
Some new pieces are stumbled upon as white wisps as you adventure, but more complex and essential pieces only emerge after solving puzzles. You’ll find sheep, discover a desert oasis and shuffle around room tiles to unlock new tools that help you move around each island faster. The building and tunnel puzzles are particularly interesting, as they take a bit more thinking to piece together.
Department of Education has published 3 public datasets View Department of Education CARTO profile for the latest activity and contribute to Open Data by creating an account in CARTO. Carto is a chill adventure game wrapped around a unique, world-shifting puzzle mechanic. Use this power to explore mysterious lands, help a quirky cast of new friends, and guide Carto on her journey home.
Depending on how sharp you are, some puzzle solutions may be very obvious. But executing those solutions often takes some digging. There’s usually someone you can talk to on screen that will give slight hints, and nothing is so complex that it feels impossible. Finding the balance between obvious and challenging is the hardest part of making a puzzle game, but Carto hits the sweet spot. It’s a game that flows surprisingly well, and even if the mechanics are simple there’s some depth to the journey you take.
Carto is the exact opposite of the major AAA releases that get consoles sold and garner huge marketing budgets. The graphics are fairly simple and the animation is far from stunning. It’s an indie title through and through, but it’s well made and offers a nice, quick journey that’s equally clever and funny. It’s a calm, clever puzzle game that has a lot of heart.
I played my way through this on the Switch, and it’s the perfect platform for this kind of indie game. It’s portable, doesn’t need long sessions to make progress and also looks good on a bigger screen. And in a gaming marketplace where bigger and better is selling new consoles, Carto plays well on pretty much any device you like using for games.
It’s extremely chill, with relaxing tunes and challenging-yet-encouraging puzzles. As the landscapes change and Carto finds her way through islands and tunnels and mysterious forests, it’s easy to be reminded that sometimes the simplest mechanics are the ones that work best. And at $20, Carto offers a journey that’s well worth the shuffle.
Basic steps to earn the secret achievements in Carto. This is not a walkthrough of the main game.
Progress
These 10 achievements are earned for completing the 10 chapters of the game and are not missable:Set Sail – Finish Chapter 1
Horti-carto-ralist – Finish Chapter 2
New Growth – Finish Chapter 3
Quick Learner – Finish Chapter 4
Slaked – Finish Chapter 5
One With the Woods – Finish Chapter 6
Volcanographer – Finish Chapter 7
First Fishtival – Finish Chapter 8
Truest Treasure – Finish Chapter 9
The Little Cartographer – Finish Chapter 10
Puzzle Pieces
Ground of Applause – Towards the end of chapter 2, you will have a cutscene where you have dinner and clap. A potted plant in the upper right of the cutscene will sway back and forth. After you wake up and go back outside, go to this same plant and press your action button 3-4 times. You’ll clap to the plant some more and it will grow a red flower.Not So Sharp – Touch a bunch of cacti in chapter 4. Around 10 or so.
Cawtet – Chapter 6, there will be 4 birds in 4 corners of 4 map pieces. Place them all together and go to that spot. See image for which 4 pieces and how to align them.
Stirring Things Up – Towards the end of chapter 7, you will erupt the volcano. After this happens, go to the surface and enter the map interface. Interact with the volcano (the plus-sign shaped tile) and spin the tile a few times until the achievement triggers.
Strange Catch – In chapter 8, when you are in the fishing competition, create a fish that is just the head + tail and catch the fish.
Carto Xbox
Frosty Friend – In the middle of chapter 9, if you fully search every nook and cranny of the map pieces, find a snowman’s head, branches, and hat. They are all near the base camp; the hat is the trickiest one to find, as you have to do some manipulation on the ice sliding puzzles… the hat is on the last piece of sliding ice you find. After finding all 3, you’ll then find a snowball. Interact with the snowball to build the snowman and get the achievement.
Home Sweet Home – After collecting all 6 of the above pieces/achievements, go to the Secrets option from the main menu. It will unlock the Airship and award this achievement.
Other Secrets
Voracious Reader – Read EVERY story in the Story Chalet. This triggered in Chapter 10 for me on my casual playthrough. I was very careful to read every story in every room, every time I was taken back to the Chalet. I also made sure to read the meta-story book on the entrance table at every opportunity, usually multiple times during each visit.Towering Intellect – Finish the 3 Tower of Hanoi puzzles in the fewest steps possible. This takes place at the beginning of chapter 8. First puzzle can be done in 3 steps, second puzzle in 15, and third puzzle in 1. Steps for puzzle 2: move S-2, M-3, S-3, L-2, S-1, M-2, S-2, XL-3, S-3, M-1, S-1, L-3, S-2, M-3, S-3. Those are listed in Size-Mat format.
Master Cartographer – Complete the game 100%. This should trigger at the same time as the last other achievement you earn. For me, it triggered instantly with Towering Intellect.
Cartoon
Enjoy and good luck! Any questions with this guide, with the achievements, or with the game… please post in comments and I’ll try to help!