I’m Not Exaggerating When I Say Outer Wilds Is One Of The Best Experiences I’ve Ever Had With A Video Game

27 July 2025

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i’m-not-exaggerating-when-i-say-outer-wilds-is-one-of-the-best-experiences-i’ve-ever-had-with-a-video-game — I’m Not Exaggerating When I Say Outer Wilds Is One Of The Best Experiences I’ve Ever Had With A Video Game

For six years, people have told me I need to play Outer Wilds. They’ve told me that it’s one of the all-time greats. They’ve told me that I, personally, would love it. I had no doubt that I would, but… You know, that backlog is the damndest thing.

Well, I eventually did. Go me. I shared some thoughts on how the game felt so rewarding when I was just a few hours into it, but I was just a naive boy who had no idea how far this game would go. I finally wrapped it up, and it was an incredible experience, to say the least. Was it made even more dramatic by the fact that it was 5am when I sat there in awe as it all came to a close? Yes, probably, but I’d do it all over again in a heartbeat.

Once You Play Outer Wilds, You’ll Wish You Could Rewind Time And Do It Again

This Is The Section For People Who Haven’t Played It Yet

Okay, so I know claiming that a game is one of the best experiences of all time is a big deal, but hear me out. If you haven’t played Outer Wilds – or better yet, don’t know anything about it – then the simplest thing I can say is to echo what everyone else who’s played it says: Play it. Go in with as little knowledge as possible, and you’ll have an incredibly captivating and rewarding experience of your own.

A sci-fi puzzle game where you take on the role of an explorer, setting off to discover a lot more than you signed up for, as you gradually piece things together and put your own methods to the test as you start to connect the many, many dots.

If you’ve played the recently popular Blue Prince but not Outer Wilds, I couldn’t recommend a better game to jump into next.

As much as I want to sit here and convince everyone who hasn’t played it to play it, I’m hesitant to say anything to sell it, which is always difficult. Like me, you’ll just have to trust the droplets of water and release those floodgates for yourself – and you’ll be so glad you did. Trust me.

Outer Wilds Does Things Like No Other Game Out There

This Is The Section For People Who Have Played It [SPOILERS]

A space ship landed on a planets surface in Outer Wilds. The huge sun can be seen in the background.

Seriously, if you haven’t played it yet, stop here. Nothing I’m going to tell you here will sell the experience more than it will ruin it.

Alright, allow me to talk about my actual experience with this game.

Very few moments in games will leave me shocked to the point of dropping my jaw. Usually, it’ll be spectacular visuals and incredible set pieces, utilising action and scale like nothing ever depicted. A culmination of a journey, like the endings of Tears of the Kingdom or Death Stranding 2; something truly grand in every manner of the word.

However, Outer Wilds had me shocked to that degree time and time again, purely because the ideas that it had me formulate worked. The discoveries, the theorising, the puzzling obstacles, and those moments you try something you’ve been pondering for hours, for many cycles of the time loop, and it clicks. It works. No other game has felt as rewarding as those moments, be it other puzzle games or overcoming difficult boss fights.

With each Quantum rule I discovered, I was in disbelief as I put them to the test. The moment I finally landed on the Quantum Moon, I was overjoyed. When I finally learned Quantum Entanglement and worked out how to navigate the Quantum Moon, I’m pretty sure I sat back in my chair to process the relief for a moment. That element of sci-fi mystery felt so incredible to me, bolstered by the fact that you could witness the Quantum Moon and shards (or not witness, more accurately) doing the unimaginable. Somehow existing and not existing, relocating in the blink of an eye. Sure, horror games have used this method for scares, but for science fiction, it’s fascinating as much as terrifying.

These moments of shock continued beyond the Quantum elements, too. When I figured out the towers on the Ash Twin and their correlations, it was wonderful. More so was piecing together the rules I’d learned about warp technology to jump into the Ash Twin center at the last possible second. The moment that worked, I actually gasped and probably came quite close to tipping my chair.

But then we have the ending. It’s not happy, it’s not sad, and it’s endlessly terrifying, but it’s also peaceful. It’s a calm acceptance of the end of time and taking part in the birth of something new. You’re greeted with assembling everyone you know to play music, likely in the time between their lives and their inevitable deaths, as they prepare for something new that they may not get to witness – but they do get to witness the start, as they do the end.

Outer Wilds’ ending was the least rewarding part of the entire experience, but I couldn’t be happier with that. It didn’t need to give me closure, give me happiness, or give me the solution. The solutions were the dozens I’d pieced together over the course of the game. The result was the thing I could never stop, but merely understand. I couldn’t fix the universe, but I could make way for a new one.