Outer Wilds opts for a semi-realistic control scheme when it comes to flying your ship (think Kerbal Space Program). However, these dollops of wonder are easily outnumbered by the frustrations I’ve had at the hands of clunky navigation and half-baked systems. I’ve had a lot of fun taking in beautiful vistas of meteors shooting across the sky or watching the ground shake as a place rises up from the sand. The hilarity of these demises does a lot to alleviate the frustrations of being lost in this galaxy – at least, for a time. I’ve been crushed by shifting walls, flown into crunchy doom by my autopilot, asphyxiated floating in space, and even been eaten by a massive angler fish. Death is a hilarious, educational experience here. The exploding sun isn’t the only way for you to meet your demise during your travels. Though you die every 20 minutes (or less), each attempt can provide a new snippet of information that carries over to the next loop and brings you closer to solving the puzzle. All these places house a treasure trove of discoveries: intriguing lore, dusty archeological behemoths, occasional fellow astronauts, and caches of information offering new and dangerous directions for you to pursue. The Dark Bramble, a twisted vine of portals and fog, is also memorably claustrophobic and confusing – Outer Wilds’ own spooky hall of mirrors. My personal favorite are the Ash & EmberTwins, two moons in orbit of one another that circle the sun, feeding sand into each other and transforming the layout of explorable areas on each as the loop timer ticks on. All of these places are meticulously constructed and unique. It’s a fascinating design that calls to mind the innards of a pocket watch, with gears moving harmoniously in accordance with the flow of time.Įvery location you can visit is essentially a dungeon, requiring you to explore and occasionally solve puzzles with lateral thinking. Learning what events are happening where and when (and how they interact with each other) is a key part of unraveling the mystery. At the five-minute mark during one loop, you might be exploring the insides of a moon teleporting its way around the system while a planet nearby is bombarded into piecemeal oblivion by asteroids, literally falling to pieces. Those 20 minutes are a timer for you and all the locations you explore in the solar system. The time loop is the foundation on which the entire experience rests. With a rich world to match its setup, Outer Wilds is an adventure ripe with memorable moments of discovery, but it is maligned by a bad control scheme and overly obtuse progress-gating puzzles. Luckily, you’re caught in a time loop each attempt gives you 20 minutes to explore the galaxy in the hopes of preventing the catastrophe from happening again. As a newly minted astronaut in a fantastical solar system, your first day of space exploration ends on a dire note: The sun explodes, killing everyone. Outer Wilds’ premise is deliciously devious.
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