Outer Wilds is a 2019 indie game by Mobius Digital. It’s a space exploration game, and to me, it’s the greatest example of a game which defines the medium. A game which is so uniquely beautiful in how the player engages with it that it has quickly become one of my favourites of all time.
When I finally dragged Outer Wilds from my Steam backlog last month, I was enthralled. I had been going through a rough patch and ended up binging the game over a four-day period. That was around 19 hours played in total, though the game also occupied my thoughts any time I wasn’t actively playing – and I’m still thinking about it now.
It’s a game about knowledge. From the beginning of the game you have every tool you need to reach the credits; the only thing barring you from that path is what you know. There are a variety of planets which are all unique and hiding their own secrets for you to uncover.
Everyone’s playthrough of Outer Wilds is unique depending on how they engage with the game. The order you decide to visit the planets, how you take in what you learn there, and how you put that knowledge into practice will carve your unique path through the game. The game offers little guidance on where to go or even what your goal is.
That isn’t to say the game doesn’t have a story. Pretty much all of the story you encounter in Outer Wilds is told through texts, left behind by people who died long ago. That doesn’t stop it from being deeply engaging or having rich themes about shared knowledge, holding on to the way things are, and knowing when to let things end.
One of the things that makes Outer Wilds so beautiful is that those themes directly impact the player. Being a knowledge-based game, you spend most of your playtime not knowing about how much of the mystery is left to unravel. As the credits finally roll, you realise it’s time to let go. You can’t play Outer Wilds again. There are no mysteries left.
It’s difficult to express exactly how a game like this makes you feel without saying anything about it, but this is a game that needs to be played blind. I just hope that these few words convinced you how this game made me feel. And if you love video videogames at all, if you want to see what gaming as a medium is really capable of, I urge you to play it too.
Feature Image Credit: Mobius Digital
Third year Journalism student passionate about video-games.
