Outer Wilds

Developer Mobius Digital Publisher Annapurna Interactive Format PC, Xbox One (tested) Release Out now

PC, Xbox One

Thank goodness that in space no-one can hear you scream, otherwise our reputation as an intrepid explorer would be in tatters. At first glance, the autumnal colours and painterly geometries of Outer Wilds – not to mention a lovingly simulated marshmallow-roasting mechanic – suggest relaxed space-camping. The reality is quite different. Gigantic anglerfish, landmass-juggling cyclones, caves filling up with sand, moon rocks that move whenever we’re not looking directly at them, yawning black holes that spit us into the other side of the solar system: we know now that we are terrified of all of these things, and more besides. Honestly, a sugar rush seems more our speed.

But we can’t sit by the campfire forever, because there’s a mystery to unpick. The world keeps ending. Over the course of 22 in-game minutes, the sun gets bigger, redder and angrier until it finally explodes – and we wake up by the fire again, with all our memories of the previous time loop intact. And so, little by little, curiosity overcomes fear as we tentatively push at the boundaries of what is surely one of the most inventive, captivating and masterfully designed settings in the history of videogames.

In a refreshing twist on what has become the norm for many exploration-based games, Mobius Digital’s dinky solar system might be about as wide as a puddle, leapt (or rather, flown) across in a matter of moments, but it has the depth of an ocean. And, much like the sea, it oscillates between joyful and positively Lovecraftian. Its planets are not simply prettied-up globes to land on and pillage before moving onto the next: each has its own bizarre set of rules, turning them into magnificent astrophysical puzzles. A robust physics system that’s part-science, part-fiction allows you to invent semifantastical locomotion solutions: you can use gravity wells to slingshot yourself across chasms or, when floating in zero-G and out of fuel, launch your Little Scout (a camera drone) in the opposite direction to propel you forward à la Newton’s Third Law.

You start with all the tools you’ll ever need: your ship, the Little Scout, a jetpack, a flashlight and a Signalscope to track audio signals. To traverse planets successfully, you must get to know their quirks. Some of this is done by simply observing – how (and when) certain chunks of Brittle Hollow’s fragile crust, for instance, are dislodged by volcanic blasts from its orbiting moon. But much of your exploring is led by the writings of the Nomai, a now-absent alien race that crash-landed in this solar system on a mission of their own, and recorded their scientific findings. It’s not resources, abilities or upgrades, but snippets of knowledge (stored in your ship’s log as an everexpanding web of “rumours”) that open up Outer Wilds. Tales from underground settlements; hints about alternative passageways into laboratories; the

rules to a popular Nomai children’s game that innocently reveal a dangerous creature’s weakness.

It’s a hell of a way to build a world. There are no nagging objectives or indicators; you explore exactly as far as your knowledge, curiosity or sheer dumb luck takes you. The ship’s log, Nomai writings and hints from NPCs keep things purposefully vague – an orange asterisk on a log entry indicates when you haven’t completely stripped a certain location of its information, but you’ll soon figure out that doing so isn’t mandatory – and so progress is mostly made in your own head. You infer, deduce, and follow your nose, and it’s to Mobius’ credit that more often that not you find something significant at the end of it.

Curiosity overcomes fear as we tentatively push at the boundaries of one of the most inventive settings in videogames

Knowledge is, essentially, the game’s reward system. The explosion of the sun might be a downer (and, like everything in Outer Wilds, so audiovisually intimidating that it inspires actual dread and awe) but waking up once more and bouncing towards your ship knowing that your latest find has connected more of the dots makes for a compulsive positive feedback loop. Discovery is everywhere, and the quality of the world, combined with the generosity and confidence with which you’re handed it, makes this a true adventure game to rival the likes of Breath Of The Wild.

Inevitably, the pace of new revelations dwindles, and so too the most visible and potent source of endorphins – a new line in the ship’s log. The locales become ever less mysterious. And it’s when your goals become more specific, and urgent, that bolder design choices can grate. If you haven’t wrapped your head around a complex concept (the game does devious things with quantum mechanics) then trial-and-error is waylaid by strict timers – the heat death of the universe and a restarted loop included. When you have worked out what to do, perfect execution of thruster boosts, warp pad activations or a finicky input is sometimes critical. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the lead-up to a shudder-inducingly brilliant ending that reveals just enough to allow you to put all the pieces of the mystery in place – and that surely only a very few will go through the rigmarole of seeing.

Then again, there’s an argument to be made that this suits Outer Wilds. The Chosen One trope is in full effect, but this is a story about a Chosen One who chooses themselves, one ordinary adventurer who reaches down deep and pushes themselves to the ends of the universe to make the one last leap that no-one else could. You only really get anywhere meaningful if you go through it, it says, and Mobius has certainly made some risky decisions with much of Outer Wilds’ design. But rare is the game that comes along, one that believes in its hero – in you – so earnestly, and shows us the real value of being brave.

9

MAIN NPCs are few and far between: that’s probably for the best, as the writing can vary in quality. The world is so believably alive that the handful of characters inside it can often seem rather wooden in comparison.

TOP Posters inside your delightfully rickety ship serve as further tutorials. We chuckle at a crudely drawn diagram of an alien looking at a tree to refill his oxygen, before we get out into the world and realise it’s not a joke.

RIGHT This cheerful traveller is – for reasons that become clear if you poke around – one of the only others aware of the time loop. They’ll also teach you the only (and highly useful) ‘ability’ in the game on a return visit

ABOVE The soundtrack plays infrequently, but is used to stunning effect. A theme begins to play in the minutes before the sun explodes, your cue to hurriedly finish a puzzle – or seek out a place from which to enjoy the view