At the core of Outer Wilds is a very interesting and unique idea about exploring space, figuring out clues, solving puzzles and ultimately making sense of the whole universe. Playing as a newly minted astronaut in a colorful, rich world, you visit many planets in a solar system trapped in a time loop, visiting ruins, absorbing lore and hints, working strange machines and dodging danger along the way. I really like the idea in theory, but what I ultimately played left a sour taste of confusion in my mouth, probably due to my own lack of spatial coordination.
I really, really love how the game works, after a small tutorial getting you up to speed with basic controls and story, it feels like magic in some sense, because you can take your spaceship right from your home planet of Timber Hearth and go anywhere you want in space. You can go finish the game immediately if you know what to do, but you most certainly won’t organically. Armed with a spatial directional mike of sorts called the ‘signalscope’ that allows you to search for frequencies, a scout unit that you can launch and take pictures with, your spacesuit and ship, you have a few destinations you can go. The solar system has a bunch of different planets, each with their own ‘gimmick’ and you can visit them all in any order. One might be covered in typhoons, another might be full of deadly brambles, a pair of twin planets might be as an hourglass - sand moving from one to the other.
You explore around, trying to figure out things about the universe with the help of the on-board ship log that will detail all the active puzzles you haven’t solved yet. I wish this was carried on your character, because going back to the ship to see what is next or what you are supposed to be doing was kinda annoying. These puzzles sometimes involve finding someone, figuring out a location, or they are sometimes self-contained activities that require you to play with some ‘quantum physics’ that often involve looking at things with your scout unit in different angles to make them appear and disappear, it’s good stuff! You learn about an ancient civilization that tried to do something, but probably failed because all you find are corpses and message logs that you have to translate.
One of the core mechanics of the game is that it is on a 21 minutes timer, after which the sun explodes and the universe resets, save for your ship log data and whatever you, as a player, know - it might be an oversimplification, but if for instance you find a piece of paper that tells you the password to a door is 12345, the next time the universe reset you could go and open it right away because the password wouldn’t change. Everything in the game is on a 21 minute real time timer, certain areas might become inaccessible - or only possible to enter - at certain time periods, a bit like a spacefarring Majora’s Mask.
This is where it ultimately all fell apart for me because the actual act of going around and exploring without constantly dying and having to restart was too difficult. You have to manually fly your ship around in space everywhere you want to go, with only six directional thrusters to guide you. Hit something, you’ll most likely take damage; hit it too hard, your ship explodes. Your spacesuit has limited oxygen and fuel (you’ll start burning oxygen to propel yourself if you run out of fuel) and you die if you run out of oxygen, get damaged too much, or hit your head on the ceiling too hard.
This created an endless time loop - figuratively - of me launching into space, going “I want to solve X puzzle”, spending five minutes flying around, crashing into something, restarting, going the same way, making it a bit further before dying because I stepped on cactus, restarting, going the same way then getting trapped in a sand-filled room, restarting… without having made a single bit of progress on the puzzle. It’s not the puzzle’s fault, I’m sure I could’ve figured it out if I had gotten to it, but rather my inability to play the game properly, as a physics-based platformer with a time limit.
Like I said in the intro, this is what ultimately left me not finishing Outer Wilds and not really interested to play it again. The puzzle-solving, space-exploring aspect is great and I was really impressed by the game they’ve made here, even the time loop stuff is really neat, but I just can’t play the game well enough for it not to be frustrating. Restarting repeatedly isn’t fun, and while I wouldn’t want the game’s auto-pilot to be a simple fast travel, the fact that I’ve died multiple times because it ‘auto-piloted’ me right into a passing spatial body shows that this game lays down some basic principles that just didn’t jive with me. Still, Outer Wilds is unique and very interesting. You might do better than me on the whole, so I still wholeheartedly recommend you play it!
