Outer Wilds

I came into Outer Wilds with next to no context about what the game truly entailed beyond the fact that it had a time loop mechanic at its core. When I started playing through Mobius Digital’s enigmatic adventure game, I was immediately captivated by its clockwork solar system and wanted to learn more, though I knew I would only have 22 minutes to explore this space before I was promptly plopped back to the beginning of my journey. Outer Wilds had me in its clutches for about an hour, until I got fixated on one particular planet. Through a process I think I have actively suppressed from my memory, I ended up floating through the infinite void of space three times within my early loops. I had nothing on my person to get me out of this situation, so I had to just float until the time loop reset. Quite the existentially haunting fate for a fledgling space explorer. This happened three times, and instead of reflecting on how I ended up in that situation three times in a row and adjusting course, I simply elected to turn the game off forever. – Kenneth Shepard