The Power of 22: Thoughts on Outer Wilds

I think I need a minute...or 22.

When’s the last time you said that after finishing a video game?

This is a phrase normally saved when you experience something intense or profound. A movie that hits home. A song that captures what you are feeling in a way you could not express better. A wave that transported your soul to another planet. But a video game? Is it possible?

To be succinct: yes. Very much so.

I’ve been a gamer for almost 40 years. I’ve played hundreds of games and lost myself in virtual worlds for thousands of hours. Some people look down on this medium because they think it’s beneath them. I’ll never understand that type of thinking because it’s so uppity and snobbish. But worse than that, it’s limiting.

Although video games may not be for everyone, for those for whom it makes sense, it can connect deeply.

For a long time, games were extremely linear. There’s a narrative. There are stages. You refine and hone your skills to overcome stages. You pass the game. Throughout the years, gaming has become more refined, complex, artistic, and the level of agency you can feel when playing a game is surreal. Nowadays, there’s a myriad of games that are open world and you can tackle them in any order, meaning that your experience is unique and more and more, the bar gets raised concerning how unique an experience you can have.

In the world of gaming, there are countless archetypes, formulas, and clones that replicate the classics with a twist here and there to hook you enough to get you to play.

Then there’s Outer Wilds.

I have no frame of reference when it comes to this game. Learning it was the lead designer’s master thesis, I can’t say I’m surprised. It may be a video game, but it was a profound experience…and I’m not using that word lightly.

For the most part, video games give you a tutorial or steps to learn how to decipher and navigate the virtual sandbox. Outer Wilds is extremely light with its lessons and you learn to navigate this game one minute at a time, until you realize that your lessons will be learned 22 minutes at a time.

Set in unique solar system, you start the game waking up on Timber Hearth, a small planet with trees, a spaceship, a geyser, waterfalls, a museum, some other inhabitants, and lots of secrets. And I mean a LOT of secrets. Where the sense of urgency in other games comes from a single antagonist, the urgency in this game comes because, unbeknownst to you, as soon as you start the game, you will die in 22-minute cycles or less. I say less, because while other games offer plenty of hand holding, Outer Wilds will punish you relentlessly any time you think you can rush something. The spaceship you navigate can take a hit, but it’s fragile and blasting your boosters in the wrong place at the wrong time will lead to one of several hundred deaths.

And then you wake up again.

So what happens if you just stand in place for 22 minutes without moving?

You die.

That’s because something has happened in this small solar system that is causing a supernova to go off every 22 minutes. Your job is to figure out why that’s happening, how to stop it, and what happened in this solar system before your group of explorers arrived because you are not the first to have landed here.

A typical cycle goes something like this:

You wake up. You walk around. You talk to some people. You scan something that reveals lore. You find another bread crumb. You follow it. You find more lore. You find another bread crumb. More lore. You reach a dead end. You look back, and you are stuck to die either by fire, drowning, an explosion, a monster, a space tornado, falling from great heights, an imploding space ship, freezing, quicksand, or countless other ways. But you are required to go through these steps, make mistakes, and die.

Then you start another 22-minute cycle.

By trial and error, you discover where to go, where you haven’t been, you find rooms that you have no idea how to reach and the map taunts you because it’s so close. But like many things in life, the next piece of knowledge is just out of reach. For me, there were so many things I discovered by mistake. By taking my spaceship into places that made no sense. By ditching my spaceship and floating in the great beyond. By walking. By seeing a branch in the middle of nowhere, checking it out, and realizing that a tree is growing from within the ground.

In short, Outer Wilds is a game about discovery. It’s about piecing together a narrative one bit at a time. It’s about following gut instincts, putting your sonar to the ground, a wall, or the sky, seeing a possible clue, and going with it. It’s a game that can be brutally difficult because the solution is so near yet there are eight options that will get you killed. But it exists to inspire you to see everything the game has to offer and learn all the lore of all the people who came before you. It is beautifully human in its most poignant moments, that could capture beauty, the interaction between two or three researches who left information, or it will haunt you, showing you dead bodies long decayed before telling you what happened.

It is profound, which is not a word you’d associate with a video game, yet it is. Unapologetically so. It also presents a series of rules that I’ve not seen in any other video game. From switches in gravity, to teleportation, to the exact moment something happens. And this game is extremely specific. Have you ever seen something that you had to be in the right place, the right time, and look at things in the right angle to see and experience? This game does that. A lot. One particular solution requires you to arrive to a location and you have a window of about 30 seconds to access the area you’re banging your head around trying to get into. As for how much can happen in 22 minutes? The answer is simple: a lot. In some instances you have to do four things and then wait for 6 minutes until you can continue with the required sequence to reach the next part.

It is a meticulous sandbox and it is glorious in its specificity, giving you one or maybe two hints about how to decipher the solution. Sure, you could hop onto a walkthrough and breeze through the game…sort of. Sometimes even knowing the solution, you are required a degree of skill and finesse that often doesn’t translate to anyone rushing enough to use a walkthrough. I also urge you to give yourself the opportunity to decipher each section. Be refined. Be calculating. Or be stupid. There was one solution I was trying to finesse my way to. Using thrusters and boosters in an organized way. I failed 20 times before I said, screw it, let’s punch it. I aimed for a far wall, I hit max thrusters, and I laughed even though my character was hobbling after taking upwards of 70% damage. When you know you’re going to die anyways, you are offered the option to go Leroy Jenkins and although in other instances I was much more well thought out, I loved having that screw it moment and being able to find the solution.

However, it is inevitable that you will get stuck, and I know there are communities out there who will help you out just enough to get you past where you’re stuck. If you’re asking someone or checking a walkthrough, please use this tactic. Getting stuck happens, and sometimes, it’s as simple as waiting an extra 5 seconds or doing one jump, so, check the info you need, get past the block, and continue exploring at your pace with no guidelines. If there’s a distant light somewhere, explore it. Did you hear something particular in one side of a building? Look around. Are there 8 doors? Explore all 8 more than once. As mentioned above, this game is about discovery and discovery can come about through dumb luck or meticulousness.

Enjoy the sights.

Pay attention to dialogue and diary entries.

Check your notes as you progress.

See which planet you’re not discovering enough.

Above all, think outside the box.

Explore potential solutions, even whack job ideas you have because maybe it will lead you to where you have to go. Or it will lead you to another death. Either way, you win.

When you’ve discovered what’s going on, what’s happened before, and how to solve it, the game trips you up, switches the dynamic, gets even more surreal, and shows a glimpse that goes deeper into the soul of this universe. And if you’re wondering how deep it goes, realize that to find the downloadable content for this game, you have to do a specific thing within the main game to even gain access.

The curious way is how I found this out.

So I finish the main game and need a minute to process everything I just experienced in about 20-30 hours of gameplay. As an existential creature by nature, this game offers a LOT of room for thought in regard to life, humanity, spirituality, time, the relentless advance of death, and the utter beauty that can be around the corner if we only dare to look.

I revisit the game once or twice, longing for more. I revisit old places I’ve explored to 100%. And then I remember that I had bought a special edition that some people had described as occasionally terrifying and although Outer Wilds has some creepy moments, they’re more haunting than frightening. Then I revisit the museum in the main hub and see that they mention something I hadn’t read before.

Then I look up about the downloadable content and see instructions of where and when to look. And once I do, I discover a game within a game to remind me yet again, that the end is rarely ever the end.

So there’s my review for the main game. Want to read my thoughts on the downloadable portion of Outer Wilds called Echoes of the Eye?

Then I hope you’re in the mood to do some scavenger hunting. And who knows? If this piques your interest and you go for a ride, there might be something at the end of the trail.

Still want to read that second piece and see where this leads?
Then start by CLICKING HERE.