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Every solar Armageddon a happy shaking of the interplanetary etch-a-sketch. You will make a mistake that throws all your plans for this 20-minute life out the escape hatch, but in doing so you’ll often reveal a new path to explore in the next life. I was stranded.īut this is all part of the game’s happy-go-lucky sense of jeopardy. I won’t say exactly what occurred, but my ship exploded. At one point I parked on an ancient alien platform, got out of my ship and toyed with a strange control nearby.
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An underwater geyser will shoot you into the air and you will crack your skull on the underside of a secret bridge. You will be fried, exploded, flattened, thrown unexpectedly into space by weather, or your own jetpacking hubris. You will fall to the surface of an alien world with a fatal crunch. You will be squashed, suffocated, irradiated. Your ship will be struck by a ball of molten rock. OH GOD REVERSE THRUSTERS ABORT ABORT ABOR. Mysteries like: “What happens to stuff that falls into this black hole?” and “What’s hiding in this space fog?” Actually, let’s go see. Over multiple lives it builds a web of question marks, rumours and reminders to steer you towards whatever mystery is tickling you this time. It’s helpful that your shipboard computer seems to remember all your previous trips, despite being otherwise unaffected by the time loop. Well, nobody tells you that’s your job, but you’ll feel compelled by natural curiousity to do it. Your job is to piece together the mysteries of the universe through life-by-life exploration, and maybe find out why you’re trapped in a time loop. Which is good, because the sand on that hourglass world is running low. Straightforward and speedy, it takes seconds to reach another planet. This is not the spaceflight of Elite Dangerous. Also, when you’re hooning towards a heavenly sphere, one useful button matches the velocity of your target planet. And there are controls to simplify the spaceflight, including a single button to autopilot to your destination. But you can repair it from the outside just by holding down a button. And it’s joyful.įlying to these enticing orbs involves twiddling your ship’s thrusters and blasting towards whatever you want, then furiously trying to slow down and right yourself as you rocket towards the surface. The whole game is a trip to the Science Museum. Sooner or later you realise the observatory on your home planet isn’t the Science Museum. There’s a world that pours its sand onto the surface of its planetary twin (doubling up as a kind of hourglass for the end of all life). There is a planet made of water and cyclones. But the playfulness of your home town continues even as you explore other planets, with experiments and secrets hidden in ruins and caves all over the solar system. Three balls in a small compound roll from one side to another, showing in real-time the effect of the moon’s gravity.Įventually, you get your launch codes and take off. There’s a crystal that alters gravity and sticks you to the wall.
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The observatory at the top of the village is full of exhibits and has all the joy of visiting the Science Museum as a kid and playing with weird models. There’s a space suit, camera probes, and a curious fish in a tank that’s probably nothing to worry about.
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A game of hide and seek with a noise detector teaches you how to hear signals in the cosmos. It’s also an introduction to the principles of space exploration, letting you play with various toys. You’re the young hero, leaving home for your first adventure, talking to your neighbours and getting survival tips from your elders. This is a first-person explore ‘em up, but you start in a home village reminiscent of any good RPG. You can come back and listen to me some other time. I’ll try to go light on detail but if you trust me enough to play something on the basis of a single paragraph (you fool), please grab it and enjoy your time in space. It’s also a game of finding delight in your discoveries. We don’t do star ratings on RPS, but if we did I’d give Outer Wilds a small galaxy. Overflowing with a toyish love of astronomy and physics, it jettisons stuffy formulae for adventures on dangerous planets full of sand, and one-way trips to icy comets hurtling around the sun. It taps into all those Carl Saganisms that make us look at the night sky and nod enthusiastically at the Big Dipper. But it is also a learning game, generous of spirit, playful and encouraging. It’s Groundhog Day in an astronaut’s suit. You are sent back in time to the campfire, for another 20 minutes of exploring, then another and another. But with that supernova you are reborn into a seemingly endless cycle. You’re a space pilot sitting by a campfire next to your spaceship, and you have 20 minutes to explore the solar system, before the sun explodes in a white-hot ball.
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For a story about everyone dying, Outer Wilds is full of enthusiasm and hope.
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