A moment of calm. The wind is doing the work, blowing my rickety vehicle along a flat stretch. With no need to be inside, repeating the frenetic cycle of feeding the engine, full-body-pushing the enormous button to send it roaring to life and venting steam to prevent it exploding from its own heat, I'm standing on the roof watching the world go by. It's quiet.

When I drop back down into the guts of the car, something's on fire.

So it goes in Far: Lone Sails. The game follows exactly one trip, and takes place almost entirely within its vehicle. It's not the reliable car that we use in our day-to-day lives, and it's not the obliging horse that we so often use to get around in video games. It's the complete opposite of fast travel. There are no objectives or quests where you're going or where you're coming from.

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A sublime little side-scroller in the PlayDead tradition of child protagonists and looming industrial backdrops, FAR: Lone Sails is about going somewhere while staying put. It is the story of a girl, her features swallowed by a comically over-sized coat and hat, who embarks on a journey across a dried-up, abandoned continent after the loss of a loved one. The girl, however, does not do the journeying herself. She lives inside and operates a beautiful two-wheeled landship, its wooden frame peeling away when you board to reveal a dollhouse universe of cylinders and dials, swaying lanterns and pipes joined up by fat red buttons.

The landship is an immediate delight to interact with, from the way its engine backfires apoplectically to the sails that sprout like bullet-holed rabbit ears from its hull, allowing you to save precious fuel when the wind is at your back. It's also something of a pain in the arse, and all the more endearing for it. The vessel's tank only has enough fuel for a moment or so of forward movement, obliging frequent trips to the stern to load another crate into the incinerator, and you'll need to vent steam regularly to stop things bursting or catching fire. Fuel itself is more abundant than you might guess from the post-apocalytic premise (I suspect the game drops it ahead of you, depending on your performance) but it's important to be efficient, timing each top-up just right so that you eke the most from your supply while never squandering momentum by letting the engine fall quiet. You learn to save time by hopping across the roof of the rope elevator at the ship's waist, and to leave a crate on the incinerator platform, ready to go in an emergency.

Another game might have lost itself in all this bustling about, in the gradual optimisation of a space that is at once a loyal companion, a mobile home and a gorgeous analog toy, its fittings and surfaces directed outward at the player. But for every moment spent fussing over the vehicle, there's a moment in Lone Sails when you're free or forced by some external obstacle to look away, and to appreciate the contrast your rumbling haven forms with the world you're moving through. Huge oil tankers lean monstrously over dessicated seabeds. Wrecked factories reach their chimneys through sickly yellow light. Red banners flicker in the hearts of snowy railway yards.

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EGX Rezzed was wonderful, wasn't it? Tim Schafer of Monkey Island and Grim Fandango fame came to shoot the breeze with editor Oli Welsh on stage, the teams behind Two Point Hospital and Phoenix Point delved into their upcoming creations, and Digital Foundry explained how Sony might get on the road to its next console, the PlayStation 5.

There were plenty of things to play, too, and it was arguably the strongest year yet - with studios big and small showcasing fascinating new games, and some truly innovative things to play them with in the Leftfield Collection, RPS area and elsewhere.

As with previous years, this isn't a definitive list, but a personal selection from the team at Eurogamer as we roamed the show, and will hopefully serve as something to keep an eye out for in the coming months.

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