Outer Wilds is a fantastic game where you discover the mysteries of your galaxy, while a supernova occurs every 22 minutes.  (And time travel is involved or else it would be a very short game indeed).  Nothing else can truly compare, making this one of my favorite games of all time.  There’s just one teensy, weensy issue.  It’s also one of the scariest games I’ve ever played!  I imagine that thalassophobia (fear of the ocean) and fear of outer space go hand in hand, so that doesn’t help.  But the thing is…there are so many other ways this game freaks me out, so I might as well use today’s post as a bit of free therapy and tell you guys about it.  And maybe, just maybe…you’ll need some therapy, too, once I’m all done talking about the trauma this game has given me.

Okay, so not long after exploring Timber Hearth and getting some practice with anti-gravity, which went…so badly (a good omen if there ever was one), I finally launched my rickety little space ship into the cold vacuum beyond.  I hated it.  Very much.  It was scary.  But I’ve already covered how space makes me want to puke in this here post.  I recall the very first planet I approached was Giant’s Deep.  This is an ocean planet, which was also very fortunate, because if there’s one thing I loathe as much as space, it’s the ocean.  After much trial and error and needing the game to just do the work for me by using autopilot, I finally broke through the planet’s atmosphere, and…I immediately wanted to cry.  Or die.  Which is impossible because death just resets the 22-minute timer.  But I could have definitely cried.  There were no rules against that.

Because Giant’s Deep, which is already 99% water and contains very little solid ground upon which to curl up into a ball and weep…is also covered in tornadoes!  Everywhere!  They’re, like, all over the place!  And I hate tornadoes!  They’re right up there with space and oceans, but most games don’t have the nerve to include them!  (There’s literally a level in the SNES F-Zero that seemed to have pixelated tornadoes way off in the distance and that alone freaked me out way too much as a kid!)  I literally have nightmares about tornadoes quite often, and the scene that stretched out before my sad, sad eyes was resembling those night terrors far too closely!  But wait, it gets worse!  Somehow!  How is that even possible?

Because guess what?  The tornadoes, if you get caught in one, don’t just toss you aside like a ragdoll.  Which would be preferable to the awful truth.  No, they propel you upwards.  Right back into space!  If that happens when you’re in your spaceship, fine.  Whatever.  I hate being here anyway.  But when it happens when you’re outside your ship, frantically dog-paddling around like the tiny and insignificant lifeform that you are, it’s terrifying!  I’m pretty sure it happened to me at least once or twice, and fortunately, I didn’t actually drift away or anything, but fell right back down to the ocean below.  But can you imagine?  A tornado is coming towards you, and you’re scared enough as it is, but then it picks you up, and instead of just sending you careening, where your mangled body will at least be found, you’re thrown right off the planet entirely!

Needless to say, I quickly booked it out of there, in search of another planet that would be far dryer and have no weather.  Moisture is bad.  And weather is bad.  Now I know.  So my poor, naive self went next to Brittle Hollow.  So I landed, got out of my ship, and started walking around, and the ground started to crumble beneath my feet.  It was…quite alarming, to say the least.  This should have been a red flag, but by the time I realized, it was already too late.  A giant fissure had already opened up between myself and my ship, and my jetpack wasn’t quite sufficient to get me across.  Or I just sucked at using it back then.

But hey, fun fact.  Do you know what’s causing this planet to break apart?  Why, that’s right, there’s a black hole.  Right at its core.  Which is eating the planet from the inside out.  See, isn’t that fun?  Aren’t you glad you know that now?  What’s also fun is when the ground you’re standing on starts to sink, and you’re too slow to escape.  The next thing you know, you’re falling, and the world around you is spinning in the most nauseating fashion.  And then that’s it.  You’ve been sucked into a black hole and spat out somewhere far, far away, the marker indicating your ship appearing in the distance like some sort of sick joke.  Don’t worry, your ship is only several lightyears away.  What’s the big deal?

Now, I later learned that there’s something nearby that will teleport you back to Brittle Hollow.  Or, if you wait long enough, your ship will get sucked into the black hole, too, and the two of you can be reunited like long-lost relatives.  But do you honestly believe I stayed levelheaded for long enough to figure this out?  No.  No, I did not.  Which only made my obligatory trips to Brittle Hollow that much more harrowing, as I used my jetpack to leap over gaps in the planet’s surface, the black hole always waiting hungrily below.  And even when I did discover that returning to the planet was possible after another sickening trip through the dreaded black hole, it didn’t help all that much.  It still never changed the fact that one of the most terrifying things that this universe holds was right beneath my feet.  I will never be okay with that.  I refuse to be okay with that.

Now let me remind you, for a moment, of Giant’s Deep before we move on to our third planet.  You might have noticed that, despite being an ocean planet, this place isn’t actually inhabited by any eldritch abominations of the deep (speaking of which, why not check out last week’s post on Dredge).  But don’t worry because Dark Bramble fills those shoes just fine. The last planet I explored was…weird, to say the least.  This hollow planet warps the space around you in strange ways, where you can drift endlessly within its murky halls or send your scout camera through a small “seed” and find it’s ended up in a totally different location.  Sure, getting stuck somewhere that defies logic, where you could perpetually get lost for all eternity is scary enough.  But you don’t really need to worry about that too much.  Because if the supernova doesn’t get you, the anglerfish will.

Yes, that’s right.  While the ocean of Giant’s Deep is only home to some pretty harmless jellyfish, Dark Bramble, which contains no water whatsoever, is home to massive anglerfish that can swallow your ship whole!  And although they’re blind, their hearing is excellent, so the slightest noise is sure to attract these massive beasties to your location.  And once they know you’re there, you can’t out…um, out-float (?) them.  So the only way to get past these creatures made of pure nightmare fuel is to aim your ship in the direction you want to go, get yourself moving in that direction, then turn your thrusters off and just…drift, letting your previous momentum get you the rest of the way.  And I shouldn’t need to tell you that even this can be pretty harrowing as you float past a sleeping anglerfish mere feet from its pale, white eyes…  Just make sure your aim was true because if you bump into one, it’s all over!

Outer Wilds is packed with intrigue and terror.  And I didn’t even get into the quantum objects, which can change locations when you’re not looking at them, including an entire quantum moon that can be found orbiting different planets and upon which a person can be simultaneously dead and alive at the same time!  (Nope, nope, I’m NOT gonna think about that!)  Between an ocean planet covered in overpowered tornadoes to a black hole that’s slowly consuming a planet from the inside like some sort of cosmic parasite to sneaking past giant ravenous anglerfish, Outer Wilds is probably the most terrifying non-horror game in existence.  It’s a wonder I love it so!