110 PCWorld AUGUST 2019FEATURE
Nebula—for the first, fifth, or tenth time.
A linguistics-based puzzle game won’t be to
everyone’s taste, but it’s very much to my taste,
and I’ve rarely felt smarter than when I finally
deciphered the rules to Heaven’s Vault’s glyphs.BEST OF 2019 (SO FAR):
OUTER WILDS
TRAILER: GO.PCWORLD.COM/OWI
The music swells and I stop. By now, I know
exactly what those first musical cues mean:
The universe is about to end again. My 22
minutes is up. I settle in to watch the sun
explode, already planning where I’m going to
explore the next time out.
Outer Wilds is incredible. It’s a clockwork, a
solar system in miniature that’s trapped in a time
loop. The same events play out every run, with
22 minutes to explore any planet you’d like and
uncover its secrets. You could theoretically finishit in your first-ever playthrough—provided you
looked up the answer, where to go and what to
do. More likely: You’ll die, either by crashing
into a planet at top speed (as I did), or in a blaze
of glory as the clock expires.
But you could finish it, because nothing
about Outer Wilds changes. Only your
knowledge changes, as you uncover short-
cuts that make it easier to get to hidden areas,
or chart when and where certain events occur
so you can be in the right spot next time, or
learn in one area a heretofore-unknown
mechanic that will get you past an obstacle in
another area. The story is told in scraps of a
lost language—reminiscent of Heaven’s Vault,
albeit without the translation mechanic. By
the end you’ll have an idea of how and why
the time loop occurred, and what to do about
it, assembling the story like a puzzle.
Outer Wilds is what an adventure gameOuter Wilds