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What’s the meaning of life? Are we alone in the universe? How do you know if the fridge light goes off after you close the door? It’s questions like this that have driven humankind to explore the planet, the cosmos, and ourselves. And the kitchen. This irresistible drive of curiosity and the addictive high of discovery are what Outer Wilds captures so well, letting this indie game put big-name space exploration titles to shame.
Mobius Digital’s mesmerising cosmic adventure that is Outer Wilds first landed on PC and Xbox in 2019 to serious critical acclaim. Receiving plaudits around the internet and a Best Game BAFTA to boot, it’s no surprise that it topped stacks of game-of-the-year lists. It’s been a long wait for Switch gamers hoping for a port, but it’s mostly good news: the indie masterpiece has kept its magic in the jump to Nintendo’s portable – albeit with a bit of a technical struggle. The Echoes of the Eye DLC has also found its way over as part of the Archaeologist’s Edition, although we received the base game for review.
Taking place in a miniature solar system trapped in a time loop, the game sets out to deliver a captivating narrative alongside its awe-inspiring celestial views. Starting on a small forested planet with a quaint village community, you play as a new astronaut embarking on your first space flight – again and again. Armed with spaceship and jetpack, you delve into the secrets of the universe, uncovering a profound story that will challenge your emotions as much as your intellect.
As a story-driven first-person game, there are elements of the walking sim about Outer Wilds. However, there are many moments of serious jeopardy and a variety of ways to die, always restarting the time loop. On top of that, ‘walking’ greatly undersells the fun of your character’s movements. Both the ship and jetpack are manoeuvred with the left stick, turning with the right, and using the ‘ZL’ and ‘ZR’ buttons to move vertically. Throw in L to change your rotation and you have a bit of a handful, but it adds up to a fluency of floaty movement that makes docking with mysterious spacecraft and racing over craggy landscapes a thrill.
This movement is the foundation of some exquisitely distilled exploration and mystery gameplay. Beginning on that tree-filled planet, the game gives away nothing: first, you have to find out what you have to find out. In exploring your surroundings in the night sky, you can launch seamlessly from the ground to the stars and back down into another world. Despite a sometimes overwhelming sense of scale – delivered with economical art direction, a rich soundscape, and an overall lighthearted air – all the planets can be zipped around in a minute or two, like a pocket-sized No Man’s Sky playset. The space physics are fun and convincing, allowing you to rocket around with just enough control to know what you’re doing and just enough chaos to make it a madcap ride. And it’s got to be the best realisation of different strengths of gravity that we’ve experienced in a game, with large planets heaving your ship down to them from space and limiting your jumps once you’re there.
If you like discovering secrets in games, you’ll be pleased to know that Outer Wilds is basically 100% secrets. Compared to other time loop stories, this one is all about gaining knowledge. You do use the loop to hone your skills like Tom Cruise in Edge of Tomorrow (Live Die Repeat), but these are not represented in an in-game skill tree: you just get better as a player. You also learn new skills, like Bill Murray’s ice sculpting in Groundhog Day, but again these are yours to keep in your head and could have been applied from the start of the game if only you’d known them. There are even elements of learning the relationships and movements of people à la Majora’s Mask, knowing where to go when and who cares about who. However, Outer Wilds brings its own emphasis on exploration and learning the layout and workings of the planets. A location might take several loops of experimentation to figure out how to get to, but eventually you can make a beeline there and reach it within a couple of minutes of waking up – all based on nothing but knowledge, with no unlockables or gating.
This all-out dependence on learning does mean the game can be rather inscrutable. Certainly, starting out can be a drag, and some more handholding might have gone a long way. But once you’re in, you’re in, and the purity of the find-out-for-yourself approach is what makes the game the marvel that it is. Meanwhile, a side effect of the wide-open world design is that you can arrive at clues to the story at just about any moment. This means that we came across some things that seemed like utter gobbledegook until we learned the context for them – at which point we’d forgotten what they said or where we’d read them. A ship’s log that survives the time loop does help in this regard, however, and it’s another small price to pay for the fundamental approach of true openness.
And so we come to the burning question for the Switch release: performance. The most important thing to say here is that we loved playing the game. However, if you are looking for a silky smooth play experience, sadly you won’t find it on Switch. Gameplay regularly feels under 30 frames per second, with inconsistencies and dropped frames aplenty. We also experienced some audio stuttering and one crash.
Fortunately, the drifty nature of the physics and controls – and the not-too-severe consequences of smashing into rocks – somehow let the game get away with its low responsiveness for the most part. Similarly, while there are some jagged lines and smudged textures – especially playing handheld – the art direction is quite accommodating of the graphical downgrades.
If you have access to the game on another platform, or if inconsistent frame rates are a personal bugbear, you will want to knock a point off the score below. The bottom line is that, despite some jaw-dropping action moments, the driving force behind Outer Wilds is the gradual reveal of its story – something that stutters and muddy textures can’t spoil.
Conclusion
If you can overlook the technical challenges – and we could – Outer Wilds remains a wondrous experience on Switch. With almost no gating and a free rein to investigate a rich corner of the universe, it captures the quest for learning in the most direct way possible: the only reward for progress is knowledge. Starting with no information at all, you come to understand the intricacies of this little solar system better than its inhabitants. Having soared through such an epic, introspective, and existentially inquisitive adventure, we probably came to understand ourselves a little more, too.