Use a wonderful set of cartography tools to map out different landscapes in Beware of the Cartographer!

Rachel Watts, 9 March 2026

I cannot get enough of games where you use in-world tools to solve puzzles. One of my favourite puzzle games from last year, Strange Antiquities, did exactly that - rummaging through ancient tomes and using different items to better understand an ancient relic. I loved cracking out the magnifying glass in Blue Prince to look at the finer details of a document or looking at the inner margins of a book.

I love the idea of having a virtual tool belt of gadgets to help you solve puzzles, especially when the player is given the freedom to decide when and how to use them. Which brings us to my most recent tool belt obsession: the wonderful cartography tools in Beware of the Cartographer! 

Beware of the Cartographer!’s demo is a generous 30 minutes long, and has quickly topped my 2026 must-play list. Playing as a disciple to the kingdom’s most renowned cartographer (and royal whinger), Sir Godric de Ranflobert, you are tasked with surveying and drafting up a map of the Runnymere countryside.

At the beginning of the demo, Godric has hurt his leg and is feeling particularly whingey, so he has tasked you with map-marking duties. Nothing too difficult, just some farmland, a nearby village, and a local distillery. You need to move around the environment - a wonderful, storybook-style 360-degree panoramic view - and click on landmarks to add them as icons to your map. Then, when you open up your map, you can drag and drop these icons onto the page.

My first task is to place the location of a statue on the map, and Godric hands me my first cartographer's tool: the waywiser. With the waywiser, you can measure the distance between two places as long as you walk in a straight line. With my tool in hand, I click on the statue in the landscape and, from there, move back to the farm. I then open the map.

Your map already shows the general shape of the landscape, which is a great start. I can see that the statue is on a lump of land next to the lakefront, so I can look for similar shapes on my map. Then, using the information gathered by the waywiser, I click on where I think the statue is on the map, and the game then confirms it by inking it onto the paper. Done!

Next up is to mark the distillery, and it's time for tool number two: the graphometer. This gizmo measures the angle between two points on the horizon. As you move around, the needle moves to measure the angle. From the farm, I measure the angle between the distillery and the statue. I look out across the lake, whip out the graphometer, click on the statue, then click on the distillery. When I’ve done that, I open the map and use that information to place the distillery icon on the map.

What I love about this process (and the waywiser process, too) is that you don’t have to enter numbers or free-draw with the mouse. The information you receive from both tools is applied directly to the map. All you need to do is click on the location where you want your icon markers to go. You still get the satisfaction of using the tool, but minus the inconvenience of angles, numbers, and measurements. The trailer hints at free-draw elements later in the game, but here's hoping I know the basics by then.

The last place to mark on the map is Laketon, a small fishing port on the other side of the lake. It’s proving difficult to map its location because the distillery is billowing out huge plumes of smoke, veiling parts of the landscape. This is where another important element of the game is revealed. Speaking to locals will grant you pieces of information that will help with your cartography. After a friendly back-and-forth, farmer Yvette tells me the location of Laketon and asks me to deliver a love letter to her crush on the island, and as thanks, I agree. It seems that talking to different characters reveals information that your tools and your own two eyes could not. 

Your task of placing Laketon on the map relies on stopping the smoke from the distillery, but I'll keep shtum on that solution as it's the last puzzle of the demo. However, there’s still plenty to talk about! Outside of your cartography exploits, it seems there's a bigger mystery to solve. Speaking to the locals, you learn that the last cartographer who was mapping Runnymere has disappeared, which is somewhat worrying for your future.

There’s also the setting of the game: the Age of Enlightenment. Again, through talking with characters, there’s an ominous threat of war lurking in the background, two disgruntled kingdoms bickering over lands and borders. From where you're standing, though, you wouldn’t know it: quaint countryside, cow pastures, and serene lakes. The demo opens with the character you play as, Georgie, writing to his family that he hopes to draw a border that will bring peace. The scope of the game is hinted at here. Mapping out the border incorrectly means the potential for a nationwide conflict, the lines of war being drawn with a single stroke of ink. 

Beware of the Cartographer! is one of a handful of upcoming cartography games. There’s mapping out the alien planet in Locator, and finding buried treasure in the light-hearted Map Map. I love how different developers have interpreted cartography as a puzzle mechanic, and I can’t wait to play Beware of the Cartographer! when it releases sometime this year.