Outer Wilds is a 2019 action-adventure game developed by Mobius Digital and published by Annapurna Interactive for Microsoft Windows, Xbox One, and PlayStation 4. In the game, the player-character finds themselves on a planet with only 22 minutes before the local sun goes supernova and kills them.
Outer Wilds is an open world exploration game about a solar system trapped in an endless time loop. Every 22 minutes, the sun goes supernova, destroying the entire solar system. You must venture off your small homeworld into the darkness of space to discover the cause of the loop and end it once and for all. Explore unique planets, read cryptic texts left behind by an alien race called the Nomai, die, and try again with the knowledge you’ve learned. The environment changes as time ticks down: a planet’s surface crumbles beneath your feet, sand fills an underground city, and the sun looms ominously bigger and redder every minute. Despite the small size of this strange clockwork universe, it still manages to impart a feeling of grand cosmic mystery as you explore and discover its secrets.
This game takes a rather unusual approach to locking away its end. New sections of the map are not unlocked by acquiring new equipment or gaining new abilities. Instead, your knowledge of the game’s backstory and mechanics is the only thing keeping you from rushing straight to the end. Everything in the solar system is available to you from the start. You simply have to apply your ever-growing knowledge of this universe and its mechanics to discover the way forward. The more you explore, the more you will learn, and in return you will find ways to enter even more areas you previously thought were unreachable. This philosophy of progression based on knowledge alone is one of the most brilliant aspects of Outer Wilds.
In a time when RPG progression systems and HUD markers telling you where to go are so prevalent, Outer Wilds simply throws you into an alien solar system with a few useful tools and lets you explore it at your leisure. The game helps you as much as it can without holding your hand. Your spaceship has an autopilot, and you can set HUD markers. However, the autopilot system will not hesitate to send you crashing into anything that happens to come between you and your destination (the sun, for instance), and you can only mark locations you have already visited.
This helpfulness extends to the game’s difficulty. There are precious few hostile lifeforms to find in this solar system. Time, hazardous environments, and your own fragile equipment pose the greatest challenges instead. Your spaceship, for instance, is rather difficult to control, so you are guaranteed to slam it into a few planets as you try to land safely. However, you can repair it quickly and as many times as you want. Your oxygen and jetpack fuel meters are always ticking down, but your ship contains an infinite supply of each, and trees will also quickly refill your oxygen tank. If you crash too hard, fall too far, or run out of oxygen in the middle of space, you will die. But death inconveniences you only temporarily, as you will just start over in a new iteration of the time loop. Your ship’s log will even keep all the information you’ve gathered in previous lives, so you can resume your exploration where you left off.
Probably the biggest turnoff of this game is the amount of reading you will do. Aside from travelling between planets, gawking at the wondrous sights, and figuring out how to get access to an interesting location, you will be reading notes left behind by other members of your planet’s space program and the Nomai. Often the reward to finding your way into a new location is another few records scribed aeons ago by the Nomai. There is a part of me that enjoys this aspect: I was uncovering ancient manuscripts left behind by an alien race and figuring out what happened to that race. These texts offer an interesting parallel in the story as well; as you discover more about the Nomai, so you learn how they progressively discovered more about this solar system and their major goals.
Other than that small nitpick, there is really not much I can fault the game with except that most of the puzzles are rather easy. If you would like an action-oriented experience, a linear story, or a hardcore puzzle game, this game is probably not for you. However, if you enjoy relaxed sci-fi adventures, mystery, or exploration, Outer Wilds is a must play. And since it just released on Steam, you can pick it up on almost all of the biggest consoles or game stores.
The Numbers:
Gameplay: 10/10 — Outer Wild’s space exploration is top tier, and blasting around the solar system in your little spacecraft is extremely fun. However, the gameplay is punctuated often by reading. Tying the game progression directly to your knowledge of its story/systems without any gamified restrictions is brilliant for immersion.
Graphics/Style: 10/10 — As is typical of small indie developers, the graphical style is simple and effective. Outer Wilds offers some beautiful vistas to gaze at across its solar system, and the game’s stylized beauty is a great part of its mystery and charm.
Learning Curve/Ease of Play: 8/10 — Outer Wilds is extremely easy to pick up and play. There’s a helpful tutorial section at the beginning (mostly optional), and you are given all of your tools right at the start. Flying the spaceship and jetpack is decently easy to pick up but requires some time to master. All of Outer Wild’s puzzles are solved by logical extrapolation from the game’s systems, so there are no contrary puzzles that require a huge stretch of the imagination to figure out (okay, maybe one). However, there are also precious few puzzles in the game that posed any challenge to me during my playthrough.
Final Verdict: 9/10 – If you enjoy space exploration, and a mysterious narrative, without investing a huge amount of time, this game is for you!
Written by Cuthalion42
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