Outer Wilds (NSP, XCI) ROM + v1.1.14.856 Update + DLC

Outer Wilds is a 2019 action-adventure game developed by Mobius Digital and published by Annapurna Interactive. It was released for Microsoft Windows and Xbox One in May 2019, for PlayStation 4 in October 2019, for PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S in September 2022, and for Nintendo Switch in December 2023.

The game features the player character exploring a solar system stuck in a 22-minute time loop that ends with the sun going supernova. The player progresses through Outer Wilds by exploring the system and learning clues to the cause of the time loop. Outer Wilds received critical acclaim and several Game of the Year awards, including at the 16th British Academy Games Awards. The game received an expansion, Echoes of the Eye, in 2021.

GAMEPLAY

Outer Wilds features an unnamed player character exploring a solar system that is stuck in a time loop, going back 22 minutes before its sun goes supernova. Thus, the player is encouraged to learn why by exploring and uncovering the secrets of an extinct race known as the Nomai, who previously colonized the system hundreds of thousands of years ago. In the first part of the game, the player links with an ancient Nomai statue which ensures that the player retains information discovered in each time loop when it restarts. For example, to use the ship, the player must get the launch codes from colleagues at the local observatory.

These codes, and their knowledge, are the same across subsequent loops, allowing the player to immediately launch the ship without first visiting the observatory. The central premise of the game is exploration, with the player compelled to uncover the remains of the Nomai civilization to find the cause of the time loop and complete the game. All areas of the game are technically immediately accessible to the player upon acquiring the ship launch codes, however many areas are protected by logic puzzles which can often only be solved through learning more of the Nomai and speaking to fellow space explorers.

Some events and locations change during the time loop, which means that areas and puzzles are often only accessible at certain times. One example is the paired Ash Twin and Ember Twin planets orbiting so close to each other that sand from Ash Twin is funneled over to cover Ember Twin during the loop. This process gradually reveals the secrets buried in Ash Twin while simultaneously making the Ember Twin cave system inaccessible later on in the time loop.  The player character has health, fuel, and oxygen meters, which are replenished when the character returns to the ship or by finding trees or refills.

Health can also be replenished by eating marshmallows at campfires. The player has several tools, including a camera probe that can be launched long distances and a signalscope for locating broadcast signals. There are no equipment upgrades during the game. After each death, whether the cause is the sun going supernova, or through misadventure—e.g. drowning, falling, exposure to space vacuum—the player respawns and awakens back on their home planet at the start of the time loop.

SETTING

Outer Wilds is set in a solar system consisting of a sun orbited by several celestial bodies: the Hourglass Twins, a pair of planets orbiting each other with sand flowing from one to the other; Timber Hearth, a forested planet that is the homeworld of the four-eyed Hearthian species and is orbited by a small rocky moon, the Attlerock; Brittle Hollow, a hollow planet that is collapsing into the black hole at its center and is orbited by Hollow’s Lantern.

A volcanic moon; Giant’s Deep, a cloud-covered water planet containing several floating islands; and Dark Bramble, a shattered planet largely composed of a space-warping vine plant. Additionally, there is the Quantum Moon, which moves to orbit different planets when not observed; the Interloper, an icy comet; and space stations orbiting the sun and Giant’s Deep left by the Nomai, a race that went extinct in the solar system long before the game begins.

STORY

The player takes the role of an unnamed Hearthian space explorer, referred to as the Hatchling by other Hearthians, preparing for their first space flight as part of the Outer Wilds space exploration program. They are to be the first to explore with a device that can translate written Nomai text; before departure, a Nomai statue in a museum turns towards them. The player soon discovers that whenever the Hatchling dies, a vision of that statue appears and they are sent back in time to the start of a game in a time loop. Additionally, the loop resets after 22 minutes regardless, as the sun abruptly goes supernova, killing the Hatchling. The player, through repeated time loops, explores the solar system and the ruins that the Nomai left behind.

They discover from their writings that the Nomai were a nomadic species that explored the universe in large independent vessels; one vessel discovered a signal older than the universe emanating from something orbiting the Hearthian sun. Upon warping to the system, the vessel became embedded in Dark Bramble, with some of the Nomai surviving in escape pods. No longer able to detect the signal, dubbed the “Eye of the Universe”, the Nomai built a civilization throughout the solar system to find it again. After discovering that with enough power, objects or information sent between a linked pair of black and white holes could travel backward in time, they built a probe cannon in orbit around Giants Deep that would fire the probe in a random direction to find the Eye and a station orbiting the sun that would induce a supernova to send the probe’s data back in time 22 minutes.

The Sun Station did not work, however, and before an alternate power source could be found, the Interloper entered the system. Upon reaching the sun and melting, a powerful wave of “ghost matter” spread throughout the system, killing all of the Nomai instantly. A long time later, after the animals of Timber Hearth evolved into the Hearthians, the sun goes supernova as part of the natural end of the universe, triggering the time loop repeatedly until the probe cannon finds the Eye at the beginning of the game and through the statue inducts the Hatchling into the loop.

Armed with this knowledge, the player can repair the power source of the derelict Nomai vessel and input the coordinates of the Eye. Upon entering the Eye, the player encounters quantum versions of the other members of Outer Wilds and an echo of a Nomai they had met on the Quantum Moon, and as the universe ends the Eye creates a new universe in a Big Bang. The ending shows a similar planetary system with new life forms 14.3 billion years after its creation, with the influences of the Hearthians and Nomai.

ECHOES OF THE EYE

The Echoes of the Eye expansion adds a new exhibit to the museum at the beginning of the game, which shows off the deep space satellite used to generate the player’s system map. The player soon discovers an object that eclipses the sun—a planet-sized rotating ship, hidden within a cloaking field. Within this ship, called “the Stranger”, the player finds an abandoned village by a circular river, containing heavily damaged slide reels that can be projected to tell the story of the Stranger’s inhabitants. Similar to the Nomai, the unnamed species that built the Stranger also came to the Hearthian system after discovering the Eye of the Universe’s signals, forming a religion around it and ravaging their homeworld moon to build the Stranger. Upon reaching the system and discovering that the Eye heralded the end of the universe, they destroyed their monuments to the Eye and constructed a device to block its signal from other races. The inhabitants then built a virtual reality of their homeworld, which could be entered using lantern-like devices and in which they could remain even after death.

The player discovers their corpses, still holding the lanterns, as well as one inhabitant, the Prisoner, who is locked away from the others both in reality and in the virtual world. The player learns how to enter the simulation via the artifacts and discovers the active consciousness of the inhabitants, who are hostile to the player. The Prisoner’s vault, however, cannot be entered. After discovering slide reels showing the limitations of the virtual reality system, the player uses glitches in the system to unlock the vault’s three seals and open it. Communicating with the player via a telepathic projection staff, the Prisoner transmits a memory of their crime, which was to disable the signal blocker surrounding the Eye temporarily before they were imprisoned. The player then uses the staff to explain to the Prisoner how their actions led the Nomai to discover the signal of the Eye and enter the system, setting the events of the game in motion. The Prisoner then exits the vault and vanishes, leaving behind their staff, which shows the player a vision of the Prisoner and player together on a raft. If the player travels to the Eye of the Universe after having met with the Prisoner, they will find a quantum version of the Prisoner alongside the other characters.