NO! Not The Outer Worlds

Outer Wilds!

This game is near the best game I have ever played, even if you can only play it once.

What does this mean?

Basically what I mean by that is the way the game is structured encourages you to explore, and record information. Beating the game requires you collect a certain amount of information, and putting together the information to create the pieces to a giant puzzle (You don't even know you're solving!). This is amazing and also impactful, as you will only come to the solutions once!

This game feels like puzzleception (Puzzle Inception) at points, but every single time you put the pieces together the feeling of satisfaction grows as you inch closer and closer to solving it all.

The General Idea

Alright, before I get ahead of myself let me give you the general jist of the game.

The solar system is dying!

The sun is exploding!

Yeah... in this game unfortunately you're doomed to die every 22 minutes (Real Life Minutes). That's okay though! We're stuck in a time loop!

You heard me right, every single time you would die in any way you will wake up at the beginning of that 22 minute loop completely unscathed!

Now in the story you're playing as a humanoid creature called a "Hearthian" and you're shaping up to use a ship to explore outer space! During your travels you find the ruins of a previous civilization, and you start piecing together a larger story, or like a history.

Let's Break Some of This Down More

This game has A LOT to unpack when it comes time to understand the pacing. First of all you need to understand how the gameplay functions, simply so you can envision this going further. Here's a few bullets that might paint a better picture.

  • This game is an exploration game, with no hard limits where you can and cannot go
  • You use a rocket to fly around a medium sized solar system, with all kinds of cool gravity shenanigans to mess with
  • Events during gameplay happens on a time scale, so as you learn you can find more and more things to do
  • Your objective is to fly around all the different planets, piecing together a larger story
  • The movement is very fun, with some planets having moon gravity and others having crazy heavy gravity

Now We Put it Back Together

So you're flying around a solar system, with fun space-inspired physics, with nothing limiting what you can go do or see whenever you want! While you're doing all this flying around and goofing around you'll piece together a lot of random little facts (stored in your ship log), which leads you to be thrust into the middle of this story, which eventually will have you hooked and hunting every nook and cranny for as much information as you can possibly gather.

In Conclusion

This game is a once in a lifetime oppurtunity. No other game quite compares to the world, history, and overall atmosphere that Outer Wilds has created. No don't watch someone else play it. Go enjoy it for yourself, experience it in your own unique way!