It's hard for me to express just how incredibly brilliant this game is and how beautiful it is to play.

What's incredible to me is that the successfully make a game where all of the progress is through information gained while exploring, there are absolutely zero artificial barrier to progress. Once you know the world, you can finish in one play through.

Most games cheat regarding exploration by tying exploration to unlocks in the game. As a huge metroidvania fan, this is can still be amazing.

It's just nearly unbelievable that the team behind Outer Wilds achieved this all through clever construction of the world they build.

On top of this you get a very emotionally compelling narrative and music that instantly gives me chills when I hear it.

Honestly the perfect game.

Riven is another brilliant game that shares the structure of using information about the world as both the purpose and the means to exploration.

Outer Wilds excels with creative planets full of adventure, while Riven is a slow paced affair that is impressively dedicated to creating an intricate world wordlessly.

Without written aids ala the logs in Outer Wilds, gleaning insights from disparate information in Riven often means scrawling down notes & looking for patterns.

While I highly reccomend Riven for fans of the structure of Outer Wilds, Riven is now a dated game that operates at a glacial pace. I played it recently at a time that I was taking a break from more modern games and I think that did wonders for helping me adjust to its conventions & pace. If you give it a shot know that it'll demand your patience before it'll absorb you into its world.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=bsh_vyAfMuE

I'm actually replaying Riven right now, and at least for me personally, I find it just as new and refreshing as it was so many years ago.

Riven and its siblings (Myst, etc) are the only games that I've ever had to take down written notes to plan how to approach and solve the puzzles. Riven is more than just a play-for-fun-with-no-benefit way to spend my time; it is an intellectual exercise.

Riven is an absolute masterpiece in visual storytelling. I remember playing it when it came out and just being blown away by it.

Riven and its predecessor Myst catapulted me into 3D modeling, graphics programming, and finally development in general. I wouldn't be doing what I'm doing today if those games didn't plant a seed in my mind back then.

I still listen to the soundtrack on repeat when I'm doing work that requires intense concentration, like coding.

> It's just nearly unbelievable that the team behind Outer Wilds achieved this all through clever construction of the world they build.

One way they achieved this is they made a paper prototype they could play through quickly to make sure they got the narrative and knowledge and progression down. They also made a simple digital point and click version (using the Java library Processing, apparently) and got that rock solid before they built the rest of it. Very smart, and something people should consider if they want to make their own narrative games.

They have a whole article about it, including pictures[1]. I only wish the simple digital version could be downloaded. I'd love to play around with it now that I've beaten the game.

[1]: https://www.mobiusdigitalgames.com/news/demaking-outer-wilds

Just chiming in to concur. A technical masterpiece and lots of fun piecing together the knowledge needed to progress. Blew me away that such games exist. Only other game that gave me a similar feeling was The Witness.

Tangent: The Witness is an outstanding non-violent game as well, but unfortunately for recs here, doesn't fit due to lack of story.

I loved it too. I actually don’t agree there’s a lack of story, but it’s certainly subtle. More “poem” than “novel” in a way.

I loved the Witness, but the story seemed straight up pretentious. I just stopped listening to the audio logs after a while because they were just too long and the VAs went too hard, it was distracting and had 0 to do with the gameplay.

The cassette tapes and clips in the movie theater were my favorite part of the game (still haven't unlocked them all)

That's fair - to each their own. For me personally my favorite thing was finding those lines of "tutorial puzzles" that teach you how certain rules work, and suddenly realizing how other puzzles could be solved - I got goosebumps from that a lot of times. One thing can be said for certain, it's a great game - unfortunately not the best replay value though IMO, because you tend not to forget the puzzle rules once you figure them out (similar to Outer Wilds in this aspect).

Agree, the game is like a meditation on the nature of learning and perception. These realizations ("Is that just a tree or ...?") also gave me goosebumps.

I wish I could forget this game and play through anew.

It does contain spoilers but the games creator wrote a masters thesis on this game[1].

[1] https://digitallibrary.usc.edu/Share/o7d2vbuapqgd2mkjke8j752...

Wow, so that was six years before release date. It's fascinating to think that a such a single dedicated endevour can be one's focus for a decade + :)

This game was an amazing experience and I can’t recommend it highly enough.

I’ve been playing games most of my life, and it quickly became an all-time favorite. Exploring that solar system and piecing together the story was an incredible experience that I still think about, over two years later. The ending was also profoundly moving for me.

I seem to be the only person who was less than thrilled with it. The concept is clever, but always being on the clock quickly became frustrating. I kept spending half the available time getting to the area I was investigating, then frantically running around trying to find something new, and if at any point I made a wrong turn or the timing wasn't right I'd have to wait until the next cycle and redo everything.

Just finished this game and recommend it. There is one spot which is somewhat spooky.

Also, skip the DLC together.

Dying is not depicted in bloody ways, should be acceptable even for kids of certain age.

A masterpiece indeed

Just wanted to say this. Probably one of the top 3 games I've ever played and I started back in 91.

To make the confusion a bit worse, there is also a game called "Outer Wonders".

Damn, I was about to write this