Jules Verne’s Around the World in Eighty Days gets a steampunk reimagining in inkle’s 80 Days, and the result is something remarkable. You play as Passepartout, valet to the unflappable Phileas Fogg, managing routes, resources, and relationships as you race across a reimagined Victorian world filled with mechanical camels, submersible trains, and political intrigue. It’s an interactive novel, a strategy game, and a travel adventure all at once, and every piece fits together with extraordinary precision.
The accolades tell part of the story: TIME Magazine’s Game of the Year, four BAFTA nominations, an IGF award. But the player community tells the rest. 80 Days built an audience so engaged that inkle was able to fund a major expansion through fan demand alone. This is a game that people don’t just play but evangelize.
A World Map That Tells a Million Stories
The writing is astonishing in both quality and quantity. Over half a million words of prose create a world that feels inexhaustible. Every city you visit has its own stories, characters, and complications. A stopover in Agra plays out entirely differently from a layover in Yokohama, and the decisions you make in one location can have consequences that surface thousands of miles later.
The steampunk alternate history setting gives the writers freedom to explore themes that Verne’s original couldn’t touch. Colonialism, revolution, technology, and class are woven into the narrative naturally, giving the journey intellectual weight without ever becoming preachy. You’ll encounter rebel automatons in one city and exploited workers in the next, and the game trusts you to draw your own conclusions.
Route planning adds genuine strategy to the storytelling. Choosing between faster transport with higher costs and slower routes through more interesting territories creates meaningful trade-offs every time you open the map. Managing Fogg’s health, your budget, and your luggage while keeping an eye on the eighty-day deadline produces constant tension that makes every decision feel significant.
The replay value is extraordinary. No single playthrough can visit more than a fraction of the available cities, and the branching narrative ensures that even revisiting familiar routes produces new stories. Players regularly report a dozen complete circuits and still encountering fresh content.
Where 80 Days Shows Its Age
The game’s interface, while functional, hasn’t aged as gracefully as its writing. Navigation between the map, inventory, and conversation screens can feel clunky, particularly on smaller phone screens. The text-heavy presentation may also alienate players who prefer more visual or action-oriented games.
The pacing between cities can drag during longer route segments where you’re simply waiting for your transport to arrive. These quiet stretches offer optional conversations with Fogg and fellow travelers, but they can’t always sustain momentum, particularly on repeat playthroughs where you’ve already exhausted a route’s dialogue options.
The time pressure, while central to the game’s design, occasionally conflicts with exploration. The most interesting stories often require detours that threaten your deadline, creating situations where optimal play means skipping content. This is an intentional design choice that rewards replay, but it can frustrate players who want to see everything in a single run.
The Art of the Journey Over the Destination
80 Days understands something fundamental about travel stories: the interesting part is never the arrival. Every delay, every missed connection, every unexpected encounter along the way is where the real story lives. The game builds its entire structure around this insight, making the journey itself the reward rather than the completion of the circuit. Whether you make it in eighty days or not, the stories you accumulate along the way give every playthrough its own character and emotional arc.
Should You Play 80 Days?
If you have any interest in interactive fiction, 80 Days is essential. It’s the game that proved narrative-driven mobile experiences could stand alongside any other medium’s storytelling. Readers, strategy fans, and anyone curious about what games can do with words will find something to love here.
Skip it if you need action-driven gameplay or if reading on a phone screen doesn’t appeal to you. 80 Days is primarily a text experience, and players who want visual spectacle or reflex-based challenges will be looking in the wrong place.
The Verdict on 80 Days
80 Days is one of the best games ever made for mobile, and that’s not hyperbole. Its steampunk reimagining of Verne’s classic is witty, thoughtful, and endlessly replayable. The writing quality rarely dips across its enormous word count, the strategic layer gives every choice weight, and the branching paths ensure that no two journeys feel the same. A decade after its release, it remains the gold standard for interactive fiction on touchscreens.