Outer Wilds Review

Mobius Digital (2019)

Before playing Outer Wilds, I knew nothing about its story, its numerous awards, or even its genre; this is the perfect way to begin one’s journey. While it might not have flashy realistic graphics or hundreds of hours of gameplay, it does come with the once in a lifetime experience to explore a living, breathing solar system brimming with mystery and splendor. If that sounds like your kind of adventure, throw on your favorite spacesuit and take your first step into the Outer Wilds…

There is only one objective in Outer Wilds: Explore. While that might seem like a daunting task with an entire solar system at your fingertips, fear not as there are no wrong answer to how you start your journey. The hard part is deciding which planet to explore first. Will you head to Giant’s Deep, the raging water titan full of tornadoes and mystery? Or perhaps you’ll visit the Hourglass Twins and watch their unending tango around the sun. Maybe you’re even brave enough to dive into the Dark Bramble and chart the unknown. The choice is always yours but be quick, the sun seems to be acting strange…

The Outer Wilds universe contains many mysteries scattered throughout its solar system. As you delve into each planet and their numerous curiosities, you will slowly gather clues that make no sense on their own, but form a broader overarching narrative when pieced together just right. Since you can start your investigation at any location, your experience will be much different from other players despite being the same game. Eventually, with some luck and patience, you’ll hopefully find the answers to some of life’s greatest questions: Who are the Nomai? How do I land on the Quantum Moon? Why does the sun keep exploding?

It cannot be overstated that Outer Wilds is an absolutely brilliant game. Everything from its brutally realistic space physics to its evocative stellar soundtrack has been crafted beautifully and with purpose. Even after I completed the story and found every secret, I couldn’t help but binge YouTube videos about the game or listen to its soundtrack, hoping to re-live just a fraction of the emotions I felt during my playthrough. The biggest downside of finishing Outer Wilds is that you can never erase your memories and play it again.

As no game is completely perfect, I did encounter some controller detection issues as well as getting my ship permanently stuck in the odd tree from time to time. On that note, the developers have done an amazing job listening to player feedback and have even released several patches since its debut last year. Learning more about the development of Outer Wilds, it’s obvious that this school project turned professional production has had a lot of care and support poured into it from the start.

Joining the ranks of Hollow Knight and Celeste, Outer Wilds has easily become one of my favorite games of all time. While the soundtrack hooked me in initially and the space flight was super smooth, what really kept me invested was the story. As a big fan of sci-fi, Outer Wilds hit all right beats for an amazing narrative: An ancient space-faring civilization that mysteriously disappeared, strange worlds to explore, and even some wibbly wobbly timey wimey stuff. Just like a good book, Outer Wilds is best experienced without any spoilers so do yourself a favor and go on the rustic space adventure of a lifetime!