Outer Wilds Review
This review avoids spoilers but it does comment on the core gameplay loop of the game. If you know nothing about this game and would rather keep it that way, maybe skip this one.
Outer Wilds is an excellent video game. Without mincing words it mixes storytelling, visuals and interesting gameplay without ever feeling forced. A play through took me around ten hours, not including the DLC and I can confidently say that with the exception of around five minutes, none of that felt like a grind. That five minutes was almost entirely my fault as well.
The main gameplay loop of Outer Wilds (the spoiler I mentioned) is a time loop. You, the player, are stuck in a roughly twenty minute loop and your job is to work out what's going on. That is about all the game hands over to you. The rest is all up to you and your exploration.
Your main method of discovery is flying between different planets and finding things. Piece by piece you uncover new information that helps guide you to the next secret. There is no correct order, there’s no hand holding, just hints and your own discovery. That sense of being on your own is a huge part of what makes this game special.
Thankfully, the game has some mechanics in place to assist your adventuring. As someone who often ends up playing games in many small sittings I was worried at first that the game was going to require memorising specific sequences of events and playing them out perfectly. Thankfully that’s not the case, the game provides you with a log of key findings to help set you on track towards the next part of the mystery.
It’s the small things like that adventure log that really show the strength of the game design. There are so many games these days that try to mimic this semi-guided open world but often end up just being a long walk between linear stories. The Outer Wilds on the other hand is in the truest sense what it means for a game to be about Adventure. You’re on your own, able to make your own choices. The pieces leading you towards the conclusion come from you piecing together what you’ve learned.
Other quality of life tools like the ship's autopilot mean that players looking to focus more on exploration than navigating space can still get things done. Beyond movement the game is very light on controls. The player has only a small number of tools which mainly focus on navigation. Not needing to spend hours filling out an inventory is a welcome change and helps ensure that nothing in the game is off limits due to a missing item.
In an interesting way, Outer Wilds has very little replay value. The game is all about uncovering what’s happening and once you have, there’s no going back. Despite that, I would strongly recommend this game to anyone looking for a story to get lost in. The feeling of working through the world and uncovering its secrets is not one you’ll soon forget.
Rating: 4/4 - I wish all games were like this.
Steam Page: https://store.steampowered.com/app/753640/Outer_Wilds/