As a player I'm driven primarily by narrative, exploration, and atmosphere; sometimes I'll start up Skyrim or Fallout 4 and do radiant quests as an excuse to walk around those worlds again long after I've Consumed All The Story Content. Thousand Threads is basically the low-fi aesthetic, chill indie version of those immersion- and exploration-encouraging open world checklist mechanics (in-game documents, fetch quests, resource collection, light crafting). For what it is, I really dig it; it joins games like A Short Hike and Superflight as comparatively bite-sized versions of Forever Game mechanics I've enjoyed without the danger of becoming trapped in a weaponized Skinner box.

I don't know how far I'll get in Thousand Threads, but I've already put more time into it than superficially similar games like Proteus or Eidolon. I've also gone farther and progressed further than I'm likely to in almost any survival game despite the similar game loops. Crucially, there are no hunger meters or arbitrarily-small inventory space to force an element of constant threat, and you can toggle hostile encounters with humans and animals separately at any time. You can leave both enabled to get the classic Skyrim / Fallout / Far Cry dynamic of being hounded by bandits and wildlife when you're trying to do your own thing, or turn it off if you just want to see what's over the next ridge.