How to describe Outer Wilds, Polygon’s game of the year for 2019, without ruining everything that makes it great?
It’s surprisingly difficult, because the more you describe it, the less mysterious it becomes, and keeping the mystery alive is an enormous part of the game’s appeal.
Here’s how Colin Campbell began Polygon’s Outer Wilds review:
Outer Wilds is a nonviolent, first-person exploration-puzzle game set in a solar system that’s sprinkled with delightful mysteries. Its secrets are scattered among a whirling orrery of planets, which I probe and investigate.
That’s the stone-cold truth of Outer Wilds, from a helpfully mechanical point of view. It’s an important, incomplete part of the description. You ought to know what you do.
Thing is, the magic in Outer Wilds is as much philosophical as it is mechanical, which is why Chelsea Stark began our game of the year essay like this:
Games have long fixated on humanity’s quest to play colonist, conqueror, or anthropologist, learning about and usually seeking to control everything beyond our own horizons.
But Outer Wilds delivers one of the most ambitious tales of discovery I’ve ever seen in gaming, without a focus on violence or domination. It’s a triumph that we at Polygon are happy to declare our game of the year for 2019.
So, yes, Outer Wilds tells the story of an alien species with adorable wooden spaceships, with which you explore the solar system — and in the very process of doing so reveals a mystery that would be a tragedy to spoil. —Polygon Staff
Read Colin’s full review of Outer Wilds.
