Have you ever loved something, only to realize it’s a commercial flop or just obscure? What’s something that deserves more light than it got?
this post was submitted on 15 Feb 2026
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i simply do not hear enough people talking about Outer Wilds, i know it released in the same year as the AA game by Obsidian - Outer Worlds, the title of which is different by whole two letters, which provided a very good distraction but
AAAAA
Outer Wilds is a lighting in a bottle video game that the majority of those who have played it wish they could experience for the first time again. it's a stunning piece of art that makes you cry and you're not even sure what exactly just happened. but there's always a point where it all just hits you - and all you can do is cry
it doesn't handhold you, in fact it doesn't give you any objectives at all, you're lead through the entire game by sheer curiosity alone - and oh boy will that curiosity make you zoom across the space back and forth until you get to the bottom of it. when you utter your first "oh what's that? i'm going to check it out" it'll have you, you might not realise it yet but you're now primed for adventure
this is the only game i'm not afraid to overhype. i watched that game sit in my library, for over a year, and in that time i hyped it up in my head to unreachable levels, to the point where eventually i was close to afraid of playing it because how could it possibly meet that standard i've envisioned? and you know what? it was better than i've ever imagined. it waited for me to be ready to sit down and play it, and then it delivered and experience that i'll forever treasure
maybe it won't hit that exact sweet spot for you as it did for me, but bloody hell can i assure you you'll never forget it - even though you'll wish you did, to play it for the first time again
oh and if any of my vague praise made you interested - rule #1 of Outer Wilds Club: don't talk about Outer Wilds. don't look up anything about it, you want to experience it as blind as you possibly can, some people even go as far as buying their friends a copy so they never have to look at the steam page screenshots
"There are so many games out there that feature space travel and yet none of them really get it. The horror of an endless dark vacuum so intent on killing you that just 90 seconds in its inanimate presence is more than enough to freeze, suffocate, and explode you inside out. Space is literally the worst place in the universe.
People always think of space as above us, but it's not really; you don't have to look up to see space, you have to look away from safety to see space. Then, when you're out there in the nothing, there are jewels; un-process-ibly large balls of fire and light held together by our own fucking anger, rocks that can range between husks of nothing or everything some life ever knows, and an endless amount of phenomena that would take our scientific knowledge and fuck it from arsehole to breakfast.
But video games just don't get it. They just don't get space. Video games set in space are either just men with big swinging dicks firing at bug-eyed monsters or fucking truck driving simulators. If exploration does happen to be the focus, you'll find out that the main difference between the endless majesty that is life in this universe is the colour of the fucking grass. Yeah, you're in space but it feels inaccessible like a fingerprint wouldn't take on it; like it's behind glass.
The Outer Wilds - fucking hell - the Outer Wilds gets space. It doesn't care about scale or scientific accuracy, it gets the feel right. Yeah, your ship's made from wood and the majority of planets are the size of of a badly stocked IKEA, but watching all the stars in the sky go out one by one like far off fireworks and knowing that each one could be destroying an entire history and having to do that fucking every 22 minutes -- nothing. Nothing has made me feel like that before. No game, no book, no movie. It's beyond extraordinary.
Its planets - fuck - its planets; each one a bizarre impossible place riddled with life and death and decay and nonsense. Each one dense in history and vandalised by time. Each one nightmarish and so, so beautiful and in 22 minutes, they're gone
because the Outer Wilds isn't even really about space, it's about the question, the most important and terrifying and unanswerable question anyone ever asks: Why? Why bother? Why bother with any of this? People die, stars burn out, the universe will go quiet and dark and cold and in the longest run, nothing - absolutely nothing matters. Everything dies, the universe included. So why sit around the fire, playing music into a void that doesn't care? Why huddle around the light? Why play?
Because, well - look at it. It's mad, all of it. Life is a big stupid blob of meaningless nothing. Yet from that, we find meaning. People, things, animals, art, sofas, cereal, Rubik's cubes, silly little games about space, whatever. None of it matters in the grand scheme but fuck the grand scheme! There's no logical reason for life and nobody's gonna mourn it when it's gone, but that's what makes it fantastic. Life is a little song that we hum to ourselves and, I wouldn't want it other way.
The Outer Wilds is an optimistic game about nihilism. It's a game with no invisible walls, you can complete it in ten minutes if you know what to do - which you won't for hours - and the only limit is knowledge. It's a game literally like no other. The universe is big and long and impossible and daft and you, you happen to be experiencing it at the exact same point that you can play the Outer Wilds as well. Embrace that coincidence. Come on, what are you waiting for? The sun could explode tomorrow."
Which is my candidate for the most underrated youtuber, yeah he has 2.4 million subscribers but the videos bring in like 50k views, so it's obviously wrong.
really well said! :) i know of Nerd³, i learnt about him through an even more underrated youtuber - ManyATrueNerd, they play together sometimes. if you like goofy british men who suffer from flashes of both extreme intelligence and deep stupidity, often in the same sentence, check him out lol
I heard amazing things about Outer Wilds, was under the impression it was an adventure game but "make sure to go in blind!" was the universal advice so I didn't look up more, downloaded it, started to play, and really struggled with the controls. I wasn't raised with video games as a kid and I don't play platformers and such so my coordination is shit. When I went to the net to find a solution (because a lot of games have at least mods you can download to make things easier) but all I got was "get gud." I asked a friend who was like "oh yeah, I watched a stream of someone playing and it seems like a technically difficult game." So that's a pretty important warning to include with any Outer Wilds recommendation.
i wouldn't worry about it too much, we all struggle with the ship at first :) even the best of us! piloting it becomes second nature after some time though, just gotta learn through practice
I feel like I gave it enough of a try to know that this isn't an "at first" issue, and as a grown-ass adult I'm not going to throw an unknown number of hours at practicing something I don't know if I'll ever get the hang of enough to properly play the game.
This is an accessibility issue; many games include "cheat" modes so as to allow a much larger audience that may otherwise be physically or otherwise incapable of playing the standard mode to still enjoy it. As far as I know, this game has provided nothing of the sort. Given that OW is marketed as an adventure/exploration game rather than a technical game, I don't know why they refused to provide this, but regardless this is a gate-kept game, which is fine, not every game has to be easy or accessible, but please don't pretend otherwise.
idk what to say man, the game literally has an autopilot, all you need to learn is how to take off, and land. but you can't relay on the autopilot to do the exploring for you - being able to control your ship when needed is necessary
what other accesability options can you think of adding to a space exploration game that needs 360° of movement?
I want to like this game, but the twist that's the whole point of the story gives me anxiety.
If I could just roast marshmallows, crash the model ship, listen to the music of the planets and explore without pressure, it would be one of my favorite games of all time.
there is a way around that friend!
(light spoilers for the core mechanic ahead, first half an hour or so of playing):
spoiler
it's all about perspective. i also highly dislike timers in game, but don't think about it like a timer, because it's not really? yeah sure sometimes you get cut off in the middle of reading in a difficult to get to location, but thanks to the loop you are also just... immortal. all the knowledge is saved even when you fly yourself into the sun by accident. there is no real time pressure, you can roast those marshmallows, nobody can stop you - you have infinite time, you just need to hike to your desired campfire every now and thennot every loop has to be a race, wander around, get lost, as fast or slow as you like. yeah sometimes you need to sprint to get to a time sensitive place but even then you have the infinity to keep trying. and as you have the time when you wait for something to happen for the second time (because you forgot to put on your suit the first time) listen to music, take in the sights :)
i bounced off this game 2 times before it got me, but there's no rush, it'll wait for you
I enjoyed this game but I didn't love it as much as I see people gushing about it do. It makes me wonder if I might have enjoyed it more not having heard it hyped up all the time. I did manage to completely avoid spoilers so it wasn't that
fair enough, for me it struck all the right chords inside, but not everyone has the same chords
An absolute masterpiece.
I like outer wilds, but I just don't have enough time to play games unfortunately