Pure knowledge-based exploration.
CONTAINS MINOR SPOILERS
if (you.PlayedGame(Outer_Wilds)) then
shouldYouReadThis = true;
else
shouldYouReadThis = false Usually I provide the official description of the game before moving on with my thoughts but even that counts as a minor spoiler. If you haven’t played the game and you can avoid knowing anything about it before you play (yes even the description), please do so. I won’t be spoiling the game in this piece but I will include minor spoilers that can be also found in the official trailers and descriptions. If you are fine with that, then let’s get to it.
You’re the newest member of Outer Wilds Ventures, a fledgling space program searching for answers in a strange, constantly changing solar system.
Who built the ruins on the moon? What lurks in the heart of Dark Bramble? Why are you trapped in a time loop, and can it be stopped? To solve these mysteries you’ll have to venture into the most dangerous reaches of space.
Explaining Outer Wilds is difficult without spoiling everything. So here is what we’re going to do.
ONE: Example
You wake up. Oh no, you’re late for work. Crazy night out last night. Came back drunk and now surprise surprise, you have a hangover. The kids need to go to school and you are already running late. The clock is ticking. You have 10 minutes to: - get ready - find your keys - find your phone - pack your kids lunch Panic settles in, worst parent ever. Getting ready can wait, you go to pack your kids lunch. You go to the kitchen, it’s a mess and apparently you decided to have a midnight snack after you got back. Crisps, ice cream, homemade jelly, chocolate…You don’t normally eat snacks like this, especially in the middle of the night and you hate the mess but move on regardless. You open the fridge but you have run out of orange juice. The kids need orange juice. There is some in the cellar so you step out in the cold and walk in the snow with your slippers. They get wet and your pyjamas aren’t really thick so you’re freezing. You enter the cellar but you can only find apple juice so you keep searching only to remember that you have already brought the orange juice up into the house the other day. You facepalm, and go back to the house only to realize you don’t have your keys and can’t go in. Buzzer has been broken since last week so you can’t use that.
*RING! RING!*
Oh, that’s your phone ringing, sounds like it’s coming from somewhere at the back of the house. Snap, that means you don’t have your phone on you either to call the kids to open the door. The phone keeps ringing and it’s distracting you because you left the sound on a really high volume. You wonder where the sound is coming from but aren’t so sure. Anyway, you’re just about to shout for the kids when-
10 minutes are up. Rewinding.
You wake up.
Oh no, you’re late for work. Crazy night out last night. Came back drunk and now surprise surprise, you have a hangover. The kids need to go to school and you are already running late. The clock is ticking. You have 10 minutes to: - get ready - find your keys - find your phone - pack your kids lunch Panic settles in, worst parent ever. You know the orange juice is in the house now so you go over to the kitchen as quickly as you can. There it is, the six pack sitting in the corner as usual when you bring something up from the cellar. You grab the ready-to-go sandwiches from the fridge and a small orange juice bottle and pack one of each in a bag. That’s lunch for the kids done. You have to find your keys now. You know you used them to drive yesterday and when you entered the house so they can’t be lost. You go to the main entrance and check the key rack where you usually put them but don’t see them there. You check the table at the entrance too but nothing. Maybe they are on the living room table. Nothing there either. These are the normal locations you usually leave your keys. But last night you weren’t normal. You try to retrace your steps instead as much as you can remember. You came in, through the garage door so the keys couldn’t have been left at the key rack near the main entrance. You go check that area but there is nothing there either. You remember going to the kitchen next, so you get back there and start looking around the counter, amongst the now discarded snack wrappers and empty ice cream box but there is nothing. Oh, maybe the bathroom, you went there too. You go check the bathroom downstairs and the in-suite bathroom upstairs. Nothing. The only things you interacted with yesterday were the doors, toilet and kitchen fridge. Could it have fallen into the toilet? Or maybe you put it in the fridge?
*RING! RING!*
Oh, that’s your phone ringing, sounds like it’s coming from somewhere at the back of the house. You look outside your bedroom window at the back yard and see it glowing on the ground. Snap, you remember you had a heated conversation with your ex last night and you threw it out in the yard when you parked your car in the garage. It’s still ringing, you got some time, so you start heading to the back door of the house downstairs, past the living room, straight to the kitchen but-
10 minutes are up. Rewinding.
You wake up. Oh no, you’re late for work. Crazy night out last night. Came back drunk and now surprise surprise, you have a hangover. The kids need to go to school and you are already running late. The clock is ticking. You have 10 minutes to: - get ready - find your keys - find your phone - pack your kids lunch Panic settles in, worst parent ever. You know where the orange juice is and now where your phone is. You decide to get ready first this time so you can go grab the phone outside- oh, but you don’t have your keys. Keys first then. Toilets, doors, fridge. Please don’t let it be the toilets. You look inside, hoping you didn’t flush last night but you don’t see anything. You hope that’s a good sign. You check the fridge and freezer but there is nothing there either. You’re about to check the doors and there they are! Still hanging off the back door which you opened to throw your phone out in the back yard. You facepalm, but grab the keys in relief. You pack the kids lunch and decide to quickly go get dressed. You don’t have much time. You put on something in a rush, head downstairs, open the back door and hastily go grab your phone from the frozen yard ground.
Snap, you completely forgot to wake up the kids so they can get ready. Do you have time? It doesn’t matter. You run up to their room and knock on the door super quick before barging in.
“What the-?”
“Time for school, get up, we’re already running late!”
“What are you on about?” “Get dressed, no time to-“
“But it’s Saturday.”
Oh.
Oh…
*RING! RING!*
That’s your phone ringing. You look at it. It’s actually nothing important.
10 minutes are up. Rewinding.
You wake up. Oh no, you’re late for work- oh, it’s…You take a moment to think. You decide to rush down to the kitchen, grab the keys from the back door, head to back yard outside and pick up your phone from the frozen ground. You put the keys on the key rack at the main entrance, head back upstairs to the bedroom, jump into bed and silence your phone. It’s Saturday.
TWO: The Outer Wilds Essence
This is the essence of Outer Wilds. Knowledge based exploration. The game doesn’t give you a mission in a traditional sense, it doesn’t explain what you need to do, it doesn’t tell you where to go next and it doesn’t get in your way. The goal of the game is to theorize, ask questions and be curious enough to answer them. Do you start with finding the orange juice, or do you go for the keys first? What is your end goal? Is it to take the kids to school and go to work? Or as you find out, it’s Saturday, so maybe your goal is to sleep in. Outer Wilds is the purest form of game design married with smart level design and a great narrative flow to encourage its design philosophies.
Regarding the game design, it bases the gameplay and the mechanics on player trust, basic curiosity and player freedom. The player is in charge of where they want to go, what they want to achieve and how they are going to achieve it. Now that you know where the phone is and that the day is Saturday you can conclude your adventure in 2 minutes. Before knowing that though, you went through all of these hoops to discover all of this information. This discovery is pure and comes through experimentation and your own flow and the important thing is the journey and not the destination. Outer Wilds creates “aha!” moments through the whole game instead of the traditional final “aha!” twist you get in usual stories. “Aha!”, that’s where the orange juice is. “Aha!”, that’s where the phone sound is coming from. “Aha!”, that’s where the keys are. “Aha!”, you also fought with your ex which explains some of the snacks and item locations. While my little mundane story and design of it is nothing compared to the story and design of Outer Wilds, it works to give you an idea of what the game is.
THREE: Puzzle Design
Okaaaaay, but how is it any different from other puzzle games? Well usually, traditional puzzle design is having a question which the puzzle poses and then going through various steps using the game's tools to find a solution. Something like this:
- Games usually present the question to the player: "I need to open this locked door."
- Sometimes games also present the tool you need to solve the puzzle, be it the ability to use keys, using a portal gun, your ability to hack, etc: "I need a key to that door."
- If the game presents the tool it can then also inadvertently give the solution to the player: "I obviously need to find a key because it's a door."
- Finally, games let you figure out the steps: "Where do I find the key?"
With this structure all the player has to think about is "Where do I find the key?" . The game itself does the job of providing the rest. It provides the question, it usually provides the tool and therefore the solution. The difference with Outer Wilds is that it hides ALL the parts of the puzzle making you uncover them. Here is a not so accurate way to represent it:
You can see a bit of a different structure here. The main question of the puzzle is hidden. The solutions are also various. The steps the player takes to reach the main question can be done in any order and will in fact create more questions. Another main difference is that there can be many endings. In Outer Wilds:
- The game does not present the question to the player: "What is my goal in this game?" - The game does not present the tool you need to solve the puzzle: "I figured out the question but how are my tools useful for the puzzle, how do I do it?" - The game does not give the solution to the player "I know the question but the answer and the tools are not obvious, what do I do?" - Finally, the game lets you figure out the steps by combining the question with the tool or the tool with the solution or a step with a tool, etc. This part is not linear. With this structure the player has to think about EVERYTHING! Not just "Where do I find the key?" . The game trusts the player to put all of this together, creating a much more engaging, intelligent and exploratory gameplay by nature.
Okaaaaay, so it's a puzzle that has multiple solutions and gives you freedom to play how you want. Well yes but also...not exactly. Let's use an example. You might say "Well Portal has amazing puzzles and it doesn't tell you the solutions!". Now that we broke down the different puzzle designs, we can debate that it does: - The game presents the question to the player: "I need to go through that door." - The game presents the tool you need to solve the puzzle: "I need to use the portal gun in combination with the cube or the jump pads to redirect the laser. " - The game gives the solution to the player "I obviously need to redirect the laser to open the door." - Finally, the game lets you figure out the steps of doing that. And this is the difference. You know what you have to do. You know the question, the tool and the solution. You just need to put it together. Which is a fine way of making puzzles. But in Outer Wilds what is the solution to entering a planets core? What is the solution to accessing a piece of information that is in an inaccessible tower? The game doesn't give you the tools to answer those questions immediately. You don't have a portal gun that you can use to make a hole in the wall and teleport to that inaccessible tower. And what is the logical answer to entering a planets core? The solutions are hidden. The tools are hidden. Nothing is obvious. You don't end up getting a portal gun to access that tower. You use the power of knowledge to find a way inside. To get that knowledge you explore and you put the pieces together. The solution to entering that tower can be right in front of your eyes but unless you know it, you won't be able to solve the puzzle. Let's look at one final example. One game that has a similar thought process (but not fully the same) in one of its puzzles, is Gone Home. You can finish the game in under 1 minute if you know what to do. Here is the puzzle and the solution to it (SPOILERS!):
This puzzle has a few similarities to Outer Wilds' whole gameplay. It hides the question and the steps but not the solution or the tool.
- The game does not present the question to the player: "What is my end goal with the game?"
- The game presents the tool you need to solve the puzzle: "I have to use a key."
- The game gives the solution to the player "I obviously need to find a key to the attic hatch door."
- Finally, the game lets you figure out the steps of doing that.
So the idea is that the game has a secret panel on the wall right when you enter the house. It contains the attic key which you need in order to open the attic hatch door and finish the game. While the solution is obvious in this case so it's not exactly like the Outer Wilds (attic door needs obvious key), the question is hidden. What is the goal of the game? You don't really know exactly until you play more. You don't really know you have to get to the attic straight away, the puzzle question isn't presented to you. The steps to solving it are also based on knowledge. If you know the hidden panel is there you can be done with the game in 1minute. But you as a new player don't know that. You have to play the game normally, explore the house then find that out. Puzzles like that are really powerful because they engage the player and make them uncover what they have to do. In conclusion. Play Outer Wilds. Buy Outer Wilds. Support Outer Wilds. It is one of the best games ever made regarding its design and philosophy and I hope I managed to explain a bit why it's special. And unlike Outer Wilds puzzle design, I won't hide the question or the tool or the solution or the steps from you.
Question: Should I buy Outer Wilds?
Solution: Yes. I need to spend money to do that
Tools: I can use my credit card or cash
Steps: Use credit card -> Download the game -> Install the game
Quick THOUGHTS
Outer Wilds is worth buying.
Outer Wilds is the epitome of masterful game design. Outer Wilds will trust your intelligence and make you feel what it means to really explore and discover. Outer Wilds is a unique open world game that really makes proper use of the open world genre.