hotandcoldaf | Outer Wilds the Text Adventure

First things first: you should play Outer Wilds for yourself. It is a game that can only be experienced once and it is, no exaggeration, a strong contender for the best game of all time. But if you lack the time/inclination/money/etc to play it yourself (and don't want to watch an LP), I'm going to do my best to emulate the experience in text.

You wake up to a view of the starry night sky through the trees. Looming large above is a green planet, and just as you open your eyes, a satellite in its orbit fires off a glowing purple object, breaking apart in the process. Standing up, you find yourself at a campfire, opposite a blue, four-eyed alien. Except they're not an alien to you, of course, you're the same species. Specifically, you're Hearthians, residents of the heavily forested planet of Timber Hearth. This particular Hearthian is Slate, resident engineer of the Hearthian space program, Outer Wilds Ventures. Dialogue with them gives some important establishing information: you are the newest astronaut to join Outer Wilds Ventures, and today is the day of your first launch into space. Before you can take off, though, you need to get the launch codes from Hornfels in the observatory, clear on the other side of the village.

There is, of course, a lot to interact with as you make your way through the village. Much of it serves to explain game mechanics in an in-universe way, though some of it is just worldbuilding on its own.

Salient bits of information:
-You have two key pieces of equipment: a signalscope and the little scout. The signalscope tracks and identifies audio and radio signals, while the little scout is a launchable probe with a light, a camera, and a danger sensor.
-Ghost matter is a mysterious substance invisible to the naked eye but visible in pictures taken by the little scout. It is extremely harmful to living creatures, and if you jump into the clearly marked patch of it in the village, you will die and get a game over, complete with credits and having to restart the game from the beginning
-The overall vibe is deeply Appalachian. There's somebody brewing "sap wine," everything is ramshackle and cobbled together, including the space travel equipment, and the history of space travel as detailed by the various exhibits posted around town is comically reckless. The first Hearthian to be "intentionally launched into space" did so in a rocking chair. Fires are common. The launch pad is made of wood. Don't worry about it.

The observatory itself is mostly a museum. Some of it is real world space science, like the life cycle of a star before it goes supernova, but a lot of it is Outer Wilds specific. Right by the entrance is an enormous stone bust of a three-eyed goat-like alien, and admiring it is your buddy Hal. They explain that this statue is a new addition to the museum, recently brought back by one of the astronauts. It's the first representation of a living Nomai they've ever found! They had fur, how weird! Hal then goes on to express excitement for you having your first launch today, in no small part because they have been working with you to create a device that can translate Nomai writing, and you'll be bringing it to space with you.

The Nomai, in case you hadn't figured it out, are the apparently-now-extinct ancient precursor race whose left-behind technology is an essential part of Hearthian space travel tech. There is in fact a Nomai skeleton on display in the museum, just to make it clear that the "apparently now extinct" bit is not "they've all disappeared mysteriously," it's "all we've ever found is all the decayed corpses."

Other interesting things in the museum:
-A piece of a wall with Nomai writing on it, which when translated mentions an "Eye." Nomai writing consists of small tight glyphs in a spiral, with additional lines spiraling off that are either continuations by the original author or responses by other Nomai in a conversation.
-A Nomai gravity crystal, which allows you to walk on a surface around it regardless of what normal gravity is.
-A Nomai warp core, of the same type which allows you to recall your little scout after you've launched it.
-A small anglerfish-like creature, found attached to a Hearthian ship after it flew near Dark Bramble.
-A big blue rock which moves around when you're not looking at it
-A model of the solar system that expands into your real-time map when you examine it; I'll go into detail on the solar system later.

Once you're done looking around, you can find Hornfels on the second floor of the observatory. They give you the launch codes and ask you what you intend to do, and whatever answer you give here, they'll advise you as to a starting point towards the goal you pick, and then send you on your way.

As you head out of the observatory, you stop dead in your tracks in the doorway to the entrance hallway, because you can see the Nomai statue there and it's moving, rotating to face you, and then it opens its eyes and your vision blacks out, replaced by scattered images of everything you've done up to this point, receding into this thing:

And then it's over, and you're just left alone in the observatory with this weird statue. When you leave, you can find Hal a little ways down the path and tell them about what just happened. They agree that it's super weird and have no idea why it would do that. But if you want to look into it further, the statue was found by Gabbro on Giant's Deep, and they should still be there, though it's a toss up whether you'll get any useful information out of them or not on account of Gabbro being, well, Gabbro.

Nothing left to do here, certainly, but to return to the campfire you started at, enter the launch codes so you can ascend the launch tower, and hop in your spaceship so you can go explore the solar system for yourself.

Which means it is now time to finally discuss the solar system, the titular Outer Wilds! Starting from the center and working outwards, we have:

-The Sun. You can't land on this, obviously. But there is some kind of satellite closely orbiting it.

-The Hourglass Twins, Ash Twin and Ember Twin. Two planets in close orbit together, their name comes from how all the sand on one planet will flow to the other and then after a while, the sand will all flow back, in an eternal cycle. Currently, Ash Twin is fully covered in sand and the deep canyons of Ember Twin are fully open. The drum-playing astronomer, Chert, is on Ember Twin.

-Timber Hearth. Home sweet home. You've explored the village, but there are other craters and geysers to explore, even if it might seem like a bit of a waste of a spaceship. Timber Hearth has a moon of its own, the Attlerock, where the whistling Esker mans a lunar outpost for Outer Wilds Ventures.

-Brittle Hollow. It's hollow! A shell of stone and ice with a black hole at its center. Its moon, Hollow's Lantern, is a little ball of lava with a couple of volcanoes sticking out of it, pelting the surface of Brittle Hollow with flaming rocks on a regular basis. The banjo-playing archaeologist, Riebeck, is here on Brittle Hollow.

-Giant's Deep. The largest planet in the solar system, Giant's Deep's thick atmosphere makes it look like a gas giant from the outside, but it's actually a water planet, dotted with a few small islands and a larger number of tornados. The flute-playing Gabbro, Gabbro, is here. Giant's Deep has no moon, but it does have the broken satellite you saw when you first woke up.

-Dark Bramble. Less a planet and more a tangled mass of vines with a weird foggy center and huge chunks of ice stuck to the vine tips. No Hearthian has ever landed on Dark Bramble, but if you point your signalscope at it, you can hear the signature harmonica music of missing daredevil pilot Feldspar. Oddly enough, you can hear the exact same thing if you point your signalscope at Timber Hearth.

-The Interloper. A comet in elliptical orbit around the sun. No Hearthian has ever landed on it successfully.

-The Quantum Moon. This moon can be spotted orbiting any planet in the solar system, but if you take your eyes off of it, it will disappear and can be found orbiting a different planet. Attempting to enter its thick atmosphere will also result in it disappearing and assuming a different orbit. Obviously, no Hearthian has ever landed on it successfully.

And now, the game is completely open to you. Anywhere I listed in bold above has information to be discovered, though you may not be able to access it at this time. It's up to you where we go! You can be as vague as specific as you like (e.g. "I want to check out Brittle Hollow" vs "I want to go talk to Riebeck"). If I'm not given specific direction or if the direction is for something that won't take a lot of time, I will randomly select points of interest in the area until we've got a nice chunk of activity covered, and then the process will repeat.

So. What do you want to do?

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