Just adding my voice to the pile despite not saying much of anything different than everyone else chanting "PLAY THIS GAME" at the top of their lungs simply because I can't imagine not doing SOMETHING to gush about Outer Wilds after experiencing it.

Outer Wilds is a game full of wonder, mystery, awe and excitement - even from the very first second. The title screen sequence alone made me pause, think, and stare the first time I saw it. In a single word, it was gorgeous. Everything about Outer Wilds is gorgeous, even the childlike curiosity this game brings out in people. I can't even count the number of times this game made my jaw drop and go quiet when discovering something, like even saying a word out loud would ruin the moment. It made me laugh, scream, cry, gasp, cheer, curse, panic, and most of all spend an inordinate amount of time just letting the clock tick down while I knowingly did things that didn't matter just because they were what felt right in the moment. Like roasting marshmallows.

But - this is not an easy game. And I mean that both mechanically and emotionally. You're never given keys or upgrades or anything at all to help you get around - only knowledge, and how you can use it. No discovery is unimportant, because Outer Wilds never holds your hand or tells you what to do. You can spend hours beating your head against the same "puzzle" when the answer was right there in front of you all along and you just had to think creatively enough to reach it. I was horrifically bad at the controls, too - any controls, you just name them. Ship, jetpack, heck sometimes I'd even kill myself just walking. I was an explosion waiting to happen, and I think I can count more times I blew up my ship rather than ones where I actually landed it. But I was so determined and invested in seeing Outer Wilds to its conclusion that I got back up every time and threw myself into it over and over. By the time I'd wrapped up the story and started clinging to achievement hunting as a way to prolong my experience with this game, I was manually flying my way to the most difficult locations in the solar system. Didn't really think I could do it, but every single thing the game offered I wanted to experience in full. So I did.

I have a very vivid memory of being around my fourth hour of playing, and the sinking dread I felt when I realized how heavy the game was going to be in emotion and concept. I had to put the entire game down for the rest of the night. I told my roommate the next morning over coffee that "that funny little space adventure game I've been relaxing with is going to be much heavier than I thought." And that's the thing - Outer Wilds perfectly balances a constant sense of melancholy and sadness with the wide-eyed wonder of something exciting to discover, just waiting in the darkness for you to go find it. It's all the heartbreak of the never ending passage of time and the horrors that can hide within it seamlessly entwined with the kind of bright wonder for the world that leaves you as you get older.

I've never played a game like it before and I don't think I ever will again. That's okay, though.