Outer Wilds is a 2019 action-adventure game developed by Mobius Digital and published by Annapurna Interactive. The game follows the player character as they explore a planetary system stuck in a 22-minute time loop that resets after the sun goes supernova and destroys the system. Through repeated attempts, they investigate the alien ruins of the ancient civilization called Nomai to discover their history and the cause of the time loop. The game began development in 2012 as director Alex Beachum's master's thesis. He was inspired to create a game focused on exploration in which the player character was not the center of the game world. Beachum led a small team in building the game, first as an independent project, then as a commercial game at Mobius after the project won the Excellence in Design and Seumas McNally Grand Prize awards at the 2015 Independent Games Festival. Annapurna joined the project as the publisher in 2015 and funded its expansion beyond a student project. Outer Wilds was released for Windows, Xbox One, and PlayStation 4 in 2019, for PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S in 2022, and for Nintendo Switch in 2023. An expansion which explores further themes in a new location in the planetary system, Echoes of the Eye, was begun in 2019 and released for the same platforms in 2021. Outer Wilds was positively received upon release, with most critics acclaiming its design and some criticizing the uneven difficulty of gameplay and pursuing the game's mysteries. Echoes of the Eye was also positively received, with some criticism for its introduction of horror elements. Outer Wilds was featured in several game of the year lists for 2019 as well as game of the decade and game of the era lists, won in multiple categories at award shows, including the Best Game award at the 16th British Academy Games Awards, and is regarded as one of the greatest video games ever made.
Gameplay
Outer Wilds is an action-adventure game set in a small planetary system in which the player character, an unnamed space explorer referred to as the Hatchling, explores and investigates its mysteries in a self-directed manner. Whenever the Hatchling dies, the game resets to the beginning; this happens regardless after 22 minutes of gameplay due to the star going supernova. The player uses these repeated time loops to discover the secrets of the Nomai, an alien species that has left ruins scattered throughout the planetary system, including why the star is exploding. A downloadable content expansion, Echoes of the Eye, adds additional locations and mysteries to the game. The Hatchling moves around the game space by walking and jumping; if they are wearing their spacesuit they may also use its jetpack to propel themselves upwards. The spacesuit has a limited supply of fuel, which can be refilled at specific locations, and a limited supply of oxygen, which is refilled when the Hatchling is near trees. If the Hatchling runs out of fuel, they can use oxygen as a propellant. Running out of oxygen, hitting an object or surface too hard, or being crushed will injure the Hatchling or damage their suit, killing them if too much injury is sustained. While wearing the spacesuit, an interface showing the remaining fuel and oxygen is shown. Damage to the Hatchling is shown by their suit icon turning red, with no explicit health amount given. The Hatchling also has a signalscope, which can be used to scan for the source of audio transmissions. The Hatchling can also freely fly a small spacecraft throughout the planetary system. The spacecraft and the celestial bodies of the system follow an exaggerated system of Newtonian physics, causing the planets and other bodies to swiftly orbit the sun and exert their own variable gravity fields, and requiring the player to counteract their own momentum to slow down while flying. Collisions can damage parts of the spacecraft and make them inoperable; too much damage can destroy it and kill the Hatchling, but can otherwise be repaired by exiting the spacecraft and interacting with the damaged component. Both the spacecraft and the spacesuit can launch a small probe to light up an area or take pictures. The player character can only carry a single object at a time. Nothing is brought back with the Hatchling when the time loop resets, with the exception of the data on the spacecraft's computer, which displays the information and mysteries that the player has found so far, organized either by location or in a web of connections. Locations evolve throughout the duration of the time loop, such as parts of a planet collapsing or sand flowing from one area to another, making some areas only accessible from specific points in the time loop. Other people throughout the planetary system can be communicated with in text-based dialogue trees, while Nomai writing, found in their ruins and presented as a branching tree of messages, can be read with a translator tool.
Plot
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