I Love 1000xRESIST’s Terrible Map

By Willa Rowe | September 23, 2025 | 11:20am

Video Games Features 1000xRESIST

Editor’s Note: This week at Endless Mode, we’re exploring maps and how they help us navigate virtual spaces, both literally and not-so-literally. Whether it’s RPG overworlds that work as abstractions for a larger backdrop or scribbles that offer more insight into the person who sketched them than actual directions, we’ll be offering our thoughts on the near constant presence of in-game maps.

A substantial amount of the 2024 indie darling 1000xRESIST takes place in a sprawling structure called the Orchard. Two floors of what developer Sunset Visitor dubbed “transit-core” architecture winds in on itself, constantly baffling the player. While in reality, there are only a handful of places to go, it seems you are always getting lost. At launch, there was no map for the Orchard. Due to fan demand, that changed a little over a month after the game’s release when Sunset Visitor pushed an update that added one. That map, however, sucks.

It’s a crinkled piece of paper that the protagonist, Watcher, can unfurl when she needs directions, though for the player, it can be hit or miss. It portrays a crude interpretation of the environment drawn with uneven lines, scratched out mistakes, and doodles of little hearts that fill the margins of the page. It looks as if it was drawn by a child. Which it was. The Orchard is populated solely by teenage girls who have known no life other than the one in this single domed structure. Sunset Visitor asks the player to infer that one of them drew this map for Watcher to use. Rather than solely acting as a guide for the player, 1000xRESIST’s map is an object that exists within the game world and informs us of something about it. In short, it tells a story.

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A notable element of 1000xRESIST’s map is the way it labels points of interest. The location of the character Healer, for example, is identified by a crude drawing of her and the word “Birth”. While there was no map at launch, the Orchard has always had in-world signposts marking the way towards key locations. This same location from the map is designated as “Medical”. This difference comes from who made the map. For the sisters of the Orchard, “Medical” is most notable for being where Healer resides as well as serving as their womb, the place they are born and come into this world. What except “Birth” could then better describe this on a map? Certainly not “Medical,” that is a word given to the place by its builders, people long dead.

This same logic extends to the rest of the map, which labels locations by the purpose they serve the sisters. This method of labeling makes the location only identified by the descriptor “scary” all the more interesting. It is a gravesite of sorts, and its context only becomes clear through the natural progression of the story. Even without this knowledge, though, it still bears an understandable eeriness that many of the sisters would see as scary. The further the player and Watcher progress, the more it becomes clear that this map does not depict the entirety of what the Orchard hides.

The selective usability of the map is a bold choice on Sunset Visitor’s part. It would have been simple enough to render a more accurate and readable map for players to use (hell, fans already did). I can only imagine that creating a crappy (and I mean this as a compliment) map as an object in the game world that tells a story took more work. But it serves the overarching themes of 1000xRESIST as well as reinforcing the game’s clear opinions on digital space.

As briefly mentioned, even before the in-game map was added, 1000xRESIST had some amount of navigational guidance for confused players. Throughout the Orchard are literal signposts with arrows pointing the way to key locations. A combination of consulting these signs and learning the geography of the Orchard helps the player slowly create their own mental map of the world. Unlike open-world games that can seem almost endless in their digital space, 1000xRESIST’s Orchard is relatively small, only containing a handful of key areas. By designing this environment with a heavy influence from transit stations, Sunset Visitor is purposely playing with the duality of these spaces. They can be confusing and maze-like, but also follow a logic that, once you make the effort to learn, makes them seem almost achingly easy to navigate.

This map design isn’t new to games either, and the Orchard feels like a clear descendant of past examples such as Mass Effect’s Citadel. The awe-inspiring space station from BioWare’s 2007 sci-fi epic (and its sequels) follows a very specific logic of interconnected hallways and levels that also feels almost impossible to navigate up front. However, like the Orchard, the collection of in-world signs and a need to constantly revisit its halls gradually gives players a sense of familiarity.

All it takes is a little work on the part of the player. Both 1000xRESIST and Mass Effect treat these spaces as real locations with a logical design meant to help people navigate them. So what makes players so confused? It is that these designs feel antithetical to most game maps, which serve as a tool for the player first rather than something that could serve a community (be it a digital one within the game). By treating the player as one small piece in a larger space, it actively makes that world feel more real, even if the player ends up feeling slightly less like the center of said world.

Both the in-game signage of the Orchard and Watcher’s map exist as different versions of communal information. The signage was created by people using the Orchard in a different way than the sisters who drew the map, building a timeline of the space and deepening our knowledge of the Orchard. Even with the post-release addition of a map, Sunset Visitor encourages players to engage with the Orchard as a physical space by treating the map less as a useful way of navigating but as a means for storytelling. “Maps can do more than record spatial way-finding,” writes illustrator and professor Catherine A. Moore, “but also guide us through temporal, emotional, and spiritual journeys.” 1000xRESIST does just that.

Willa Rowe is a queer games critic based in New York City whose writing has been featured in Digital Trends, Kotaku, Inverse, and more. She also hosts the Girl Mode podcast. When she isn’t talking games she can be found on Bluesky rooting for the New York Mets.