Games Like Firewatch
Quick Answer
The closest games to Firewatch are What Remains of Edith Finch, Gone Home, Oxenfree, Kentucky Route Zero and The Vanishing of Ethan Carter. Below are 9 picks with the reason for each — what carries over from Firewatch, and what does not.
What Made Firewatch Work
Firewatch is two people talking on a radio in a forest. There is no combat, the walking is the pacing, and the tension comes entirely from voice performance and what you choose to say. Games recommended here have to carry a story on writing alone.
Firewatch was the first game from Campo Santo, published by Panic in 2016 on PC and PS4 and later on Xbox One and Switch. You play Henry, a new fire lookout in Wyoming's Shoshone National Forest in the summer of 1989, and your only company is Delilah, a supervisor you never see, on the other end of a handheld radio. The play is walking, map-reading and choosing what to say, and the mystery that builds in the woods matters less than the friendship. People who finish it usually want another short, voice-led story that treats adults as adults, and a place worth standing still in.
9 Games Like Firewatch
1.What Remains of Edith Finch
The best short narrative game there is, and every chapter reinvents itself.
Why it fits: Giant Sparrow's 2017 game, published by Annapurna Interactive, has you explore the Finch family house in Washington state, with each room turning into a short playable vignette about one relative. Like Firewatch, it is first-person, has no fail state, and takes about two hours.
What is different: No companion voice in your ear: it is a string of separate family stories, each with its own controls, and it is darker than Firewatch.
Where to play it: PS4, Xbox One, Switch and PC.
More about this game →2.Gone Home
The other defining game of the genre, told through a house.
Why it fits: Released in 2013 by The Fullbright Company, it sends you through an empty Oregon family home in 1995, piecing together what happened from notes and objects. It is the game most often credited with defining the first-person story genre that Firewatch belongs to.
What is different: You are alone the whole time and the story is read, not heard, from letters and objects in one house.
Where to play it: PC, PS4, Xbox One and Switch.
More about this game →3.Oxenfree
Two-way conversation as the core mechanic, with real chemistry between the characters.
Why it fits: Night School Studio's 2016 supernatural story is played almost entirely through conversation: speech bubbles appear while you walk, and you can interrupt or stay silent. A handheld radio you tune to strange frequencies is central, which makes it the closest mechanical match to Firewatch's walkie-talkie.
What is different: Seen from a distance rather than first-person, a group of teenagers instead of two adults, and a supernatural plot.
Where to play it: PC, PS4, Xbox One, Switch and mobile.
More about this game →4.Kentucky Route Zero
Slow, strange, and beautifully written.
Why it fits: Cardboard Computer released it in five acts between 2013 and 2020, and the complete TV Edition came to consoles in 2020. It is a point-and-click magical-realist road trip along a hidden highway under Kentucky, driven by dialogue choices and written with unusual care.
What is different: Point-and-click with no free walking, and far more abstract; you choose what characters say rather than steering a relationship.
Where to play it: PC, and PS4, Xbox One and Switch in the TV Edition.
More about this game →5.The Vanishing of Ethan Carter
A forest, a mystery, and a very strong sense of place.
Why it fits: The Astronauts released this first-person mystery in 2014. You play a detective in a Wisconsin valley, reconstructing crime scenes at your own pace with almost no hand-holding. The woods, lakes and quiet make it the pick with the most similar sense of place.
What is different: A detective story with scene-reconstruction puzzles, and nobody to talk to.
Where to play it: PC and PS4.
More about this game →6.Life is Strange
If the relationship at the centre was the reason you played.
Why it fits: Dontnod Entertainment's episodic adventure, published by Square Enix in 2015, follows Max and her friend Chloe in the small Oregon town of Arcadia Bay. Choices in conversation shape the relationship, and a time-rewind power lets you revisit what you said — relevant if the Henry and Delilah dynamic was the draw.
What is different: Third-person, episodic and several times longer, with a time-rewind mechanic and heavy branching choices.
Where to play it: PC, PS4 and Xbox One (it began on PS3 and Xbox 360), plus mobile; Switch in the Remastered collection.
More about this game →7.Eastshade
Wandering a landscape with no combat and time to look at it.
Why it fits: Eastshade Studios' 2019 open-world game casts you as a travelling painter on an island. There is no combat; you explore, meet residents and paint what you see to complete their requests, which suits anyone who liked Firewatch for simply wandering the forest.
What is different: Brighter and much slower, built around painting and quests for the island's residents rather than one tense summer.
Where to play it: PC, PS4 and Xbox One.
More about this game →8.Open Roads
Made by developers who started it at Fullbright, the Gone Home studio, and short.
Why it fits: Released in 2024 by the Open Roads Team — developers who began it at Fullbright, the Gone Home studio — and published by Annapurna Interactive. It is a short, fully voiced road trip taken by a mother and daughter, with the story carried by their conversations in the car.
What is different: A mother and daughter on a road trip; drawn characters over 3D rooms, and no wilderness to cross.
More about this game →9.Journey
Wordless, but the same intent — connection and landscape.
Why it fits: thatgamecompany's 2012 PlayStation 3 game has no dialogue at all: you cross a desert toward a distant mountain, sometimes paired with an anonymous online stranger. It shares Firewatch's reliance on landscape and a single human connection, told without words.
What is different: No words at all, and the landscape is a desert and a mountain rather than a real forest.
Where to play it: PS3, PS4, PC and iOS.
Games like this →
Where to Start
If it was the radio conversation, play Oxenfree next — talking is the core mechanic there too. If it was the feeling of a place and a slowly revealed story, What Remains of Edith Finch is the stronger game and just as short. Gone Home is the one to play if you want to see where this whole style of game came from.
How We Picked These Games
Every pick had to work with no combat at all and be finishable in a few evenings, because that pacing is half of Firewatch. We favoured games where dialogue or voice carries the story over ones told through text logs, and we kept one outlier, Journey, for the players who came for the landscape rather than the conversation. Long choice-heavy series were left out unless the first entry stands on its own.
Get the Mind Skills Arcade app
Free brain games for memory, logic, math and focus, from the makers of this game finder. Plays offline.
Free · iPhone & Android · no account
How These Picks Match Firewatch
Firewatch is catalogued here as an art-led game and action-adventure among PC and multi-platform games. All nine picks share at least one of its genre tags — nine adventures among them.
Going by the "where to play it" notes, eight can be played on PC, eight can be played on a PlayStation, five can be played on a Nintendo system and six can be played on an Xbox. What Remains of Edith Finch, Gone Home, Oxenfree, Kentucky Route Zero, The Vanishing of Ethan Carter, Eastshade, Open Roads and Journey are from small or self-published studios.
| Game | Genre | Shares with Firewatch | Where to play |
|---|---|---|---|
| What Remains of Edith Finch | Adventure, Indie, Casual | Adventure | PS4, Xbox One, Switch and PC. |
| Gone Home | Adventure, Indie, Casual | Adventure | PC, PS4, Xbox One and Switch. |
| Oxenfree | Adventure, Indie, Casual | Adventure | PC, PS4, Xbox One, Switch and mobile. |
| Kentucky Route Zero | Adventure, Indie, Casual | Adventure | PC, and PS4, Xbox One and Switch in the TV Edition. |
| The Vanishing of Ethan Carter | Adventure, Puzzle, Indie | Adventure | PC and PS4. |
| Life is Strange | Adventure, Casual | Adventure | PC, PS4 and Xbox One (it began on PS3 and Xbox 360), plus mobile; Switch in the Remastered collection. |
| Eastshade | Adventure, Indie, Casual | Adventure | PC, PS4 and Xbox One. |
| Open Roads | Adventure, Indie, Casual | Adventure | — |
| Journey | Adventure, Indie, Casual | Adventure | PS3, PS4, PC and iOS. |
Buy This Game
* Affiliate links. We may earn a commission at no extra cost to you.
Support Justlikegames
Made by one person, for free
I run Justlikegames pretty much for free — covering hosting, APIs, and the hours spent writing recommendation lists by hand. There are no paywalls, no intrusive popups, and no "premium" tier. If the site has helped you find your next favorite game, a coffee goes a long way toward keeping it that way.
Buy me a coffeeEven $3 covers a day of API costs. Thank you 💛
If You Love Firewatch, Try These
Frequently Asked Questions
More PC Games Like Pages
Explore Other Consoles
Get Game Recs Weekly
Top picks, hidden gems, and deals — straight to your inbox. No spam, ever.
