Definition of "free-roaming"

While Metroid introduced multiple endings to a linear game, other more recent designs have presented free-roaming worlds incorporating multiple gameplay paths.

2009, Wendy Despain, Writing for Video Game Genres: From FPS to RPG, page 49

Let the player trigger these in any order she chooses; this is vital because the game ceases being static and takes on the illusion of a free-roaming game.

2009, Michael Duggan, Wii Game Creation for Teens, page 294

Its free-roaming world was a departure for both the programmer and for console gamers, and in retrospect it was an ambitious undertaking that could have all gone horribly wrong.

2013, Matt Fox, The Video Games Guide

From the distance of today, my guess is that it was the free-roaming horses that had most to do with the increase in carnivores, mainly because nobody was trying to protect them.

2001, Chilco Choate, The Fire Still Burns, page 51

Further, the chickens are free-roaming, which means that it is necessary for the farmers to closely watch what the birds ingest.

2004, Kosher Chicken from Canada, page 1-5

As indicated in the Introduction, free-roaming dogs have "always" been a feature of New Providence's environment and they have "always" been considered a "nuisance" or "problem."

2005, William J. Fielding, Jane Mather, Maurice Isaacs, Potcakes: Dog Ownership in New Providence, the Bahamas, page 57

By 1985, there were nine free-roaming condors left on earth and a few more in zoos.

2010, Rebecca Solnit, Mona Caron, A California Bestiary, page 10

Since free-roaming cats may come into the yard, any sandboxes should be covered when not in use to prevent cats from defecating in them.

2012, The Praeger Handbook of Environmental Health - Volume 1, page Robert H. Friis

Microlensed double-image quasars have sent a consistent message that the baryonic dark matter consists of a dark population of free-roaming planet mass objects.

2005, Neil J C Spooner, Vitaly Kudryavtsev, The Identification of Dark Matter, page 183

This would offer an explanation for some of the free-roaming planets that have been found and it could mean that more exist across the Milky Way.

2012, David Braun, National Geographic Tales of the Weird

There are some suggestions that these free-roaming worlds may outnumber stars by several orders of magnitude, dominating the population of objects in the universe.

2013, David Stevenson, Under a Crimson Sun: Prospects for Life in a Red Dwarf System