If you’re reading this and have not played Outer Wilds; stop reading, go start and finish Outer Wilds, then come back and read the rest of this review.
What Is It? It’s tough to discuss Outer Wilds without spoilers. There are resources out there which do so, but I will not be attempting that feat here. This is your spoiler warning.
Outer Wilds sets you in the shoes of a newly certified astronaut from a far away world tasked to take an extremely homemade looking ship to explore your solar system. The game doesn’t tell you much else except for dropping some hints about other explorers who are out among the planets. Once you’ve walked around your home planet a bit, you are free to leave and go anywhere you want. Which planet will you explore? Will you try to fly directly into the sun for fun? Will you crash your first time? Forget to put on your suit? The branching path possibilities of this game are endless from about 30 minutes on.
You will come to find out that you are stuck in a time loop with a star exploding every 22 minutes. Reach that time, or reach an early death by some other means, and you will wake up back by the campfire on your home planet. Walk over to your ship, launch and try again.
It took me a while to figure out what I was supposed to be doing on these trips, but eventually you’ll start filling out a journal with clues you pick up and a larger story begins to unfold 22 minutes (if you’re lucky) at a time. Your journal does carry over between loops. And to be clear, there is no correct or intended ordering to explore in this game. Go to whichever planet looks most interesting, or whatever strikes your fancy each time you take off in your ship.
Outer Wilds is a lot of things. It is a physics-based spacecraft simulator, an exploration game, at various times a horror or platform game, and so on. To me, Outer Wilds is an escape room above all else. It is entirely possible to “escape” on your first flight. There is actually an achievement for doing just that. Everything is there from the very start, but it is up to you, the explorer, to learn enough to escape.
This is a fascinating take on “you can play the final boss from the start.” Breath of the Wild famously did this (after escaping the Great Plateau, of course) where Gannon was sitting right there for fighting whenever you wanted, but most mortals needed to level up and gain better equipment/abilities to have a chance at winning that fight. Similarly with Final Fantasy VI, after the big thing happens roughly halfway through, you are free to waltz up to the big bad guy’s headquarters at any time. The twist that Outer Wilds adds is to make it not about needing skill, grinding levels, getting better equipment, or any of these typical video game tropes. In Outer Wilds all you need is the knowledge of how it all works. You have to learn through reading scrolls, experimenting with old equipment, and figuring out how it all connects. This is the crux of the game and is such a departure from standard video game fare that it has made Outer Wilds a modern cult classic.
The Best Part: A few hours in I hit a point where it finally started clicking for me what I was supposed to be doing. Not specifically, because I still had no idea what the end goal was, but generally in the sense of needing to learn more about the various mysteries. From that point until I saw the credits, I was hooked on learning as much as I could. The momentum only built the more I learned and the closer I got to unraveling the whole thing. In a game that took me about 20 hours, I would typically be excited to see the end and move onto the next thing, but Outer Wilds had me excited about the journey right up until the very end.
The Worst Part: Motion sickness. I get motion sick playing N64 first person shooters and that’s about it, but I did have issues with Outer Wilds. I played the PS4 version on PS5 initially and could only play about 30 minutes at a time to avoid this. I noticed a free upgrade to the PS5 version and I did not have any issues starting roughly around that time. I’m not sure if it’s the PS5 fixing some graphical issue or I just got used to it, but be warned going in if you are susceptible to motion sickness in games.
The Verdict: Outer Wilds is a unique experience. This is increasingly rare in the video game space and is likely the biggest reason Outer Wilds is so celebrated by those who have played the game. There are some fun spaceship physics, a bit of platforming, and a bunch of exploring, but for the most part there isn’t a whole lot of game here. It’s a big mystery waiting to be solved and all gameplay takes a backseat to that goal. This makes for an unforgettable experience if you get hooked.
How to Play: PS4/5 Xbox One/Series, Switch, Windows
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