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If this sounds a bit like a Deus Ex-style immersive sim, except wrought over the scale of a planetary system, you’d be pretty close. I’m wary of revealing much more, considering how much of the game’s joy is in finding things out for yourself. I’m just scratching the surface of the events that occur in Outer Wilds‘ solar system. On the other hand, the sand flow from one Hourglass Twin to the other won’t expose these important ruins until this much time has passed, meaning you’ve got to wait for a bit before you can hunt down that last clue.

By this time most of Brittle Hollow will have been imploded into the black hole at its center, meaning you have to explore and visit key areas before everything’s swallowed up. This schedule, and gaining a sense of it, is key to solving the game’s many mysteries. Each location is unique and varies wildly, from the placid forests of your starting location at Timber Hearth, to the collapsing caverns of Brittle Hollow, to the storm-wracked, waterlogged Giant’s Deep, to the Hourglass Twins, a pair of planetoids that constantly shift huge tracts of sand across their shared orbit.Īll these bodies (and more besides), move according to schedule, with various events and developments seeming inevitable on the course to the sun exploding. In Outer Wilds, individual planets are tiny, not much bigger than the likes read in The Little Prince.

Heck, your trusty spaceship is made of wood. Here, rounded edges, clunky charm, and evocative, archaeological mystery take precedence over sleek technology and photorealism. Unlike the algorithm-inflected environs of vast games like No Man’s Sky and Elite Dangerous, Outer Wilds‘ solar system is bespoke and intimate in scale, its aesthetic sense informed by a cartoonish, almost childlike understanding of astronomy. After all, how else does one deal with the sort of Groundhog Day-style time loop that entraps the game’s setting?Īs the only member of the Outer Wilds Ventures exploration crew that remembers what happens across each loop, players must spend 20-odd minutes – the time between waking up to roast marshmallows before your first flight… and the sun exploding – exploring the solar system as much as they can in search of answers and adventure.Īnd what a solar system it is. Of course, It’s not all about dying horribly, though one’s repeated, often ignominious demise is a major means to an end in Outer Wilds. Released: (PC via Epic Games Store), (Xbox One), Octo(PS4) Needless to say, I haven’t been the most successful space explorer in Outer Wilds‘ history, but the beauty of it is that I’ll get there eventually, 20 minutes at a time. I made it all the way into space the next time, even landing on the moon to visit a local named Esker, but I got too caught up launching space probes at my campsite back home – while listening to Esker’s whistling – that I didn’t notice the sun exploding until the shockwave engulfed the planet.

A freshly minted astronaut from the tiny world of Timber Hearth, I took a bit too long admiring my spiffy new spaceship on the platform, before accidentally stepping off the edge and falling to my demise. I didn’t even last ten minutes into my first session with Outer Wilds, the intriguing open-world adventure game from Annapurna Interactive and Mobius Digital.