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I finished Outer Wilds a little while ago. Had tears in my eyes... I still have Echoes of the Eye to play, at least, but I'm going to miss this game. Seriously one of the most brilliant works of art I've ever experienced, and not really what I expected either.

I went into this knowing it was a story focused indie game, and I sorta expected the gameplay to take a backseat like it does in a lot of narrative games. I thought the challenges were gonna be kinda... I dunno, "symbolic," just there to let you interact a little bit as you move through the plot in a mostly passive way. But I was so wrong about that. There are some difficult sections in this game! It does NOT hold your hand, and you'll probably die a LOT. But it never feels unfair, and the game hooks you in a way that makes it very difficult not to try again immediately.

I already love spaceflight sims, but it's true that a lot of them get very repetitive after a while, and this just doesn't. Every single planet feels hand crafted, and the way the interconnected web of narrative threads comes together, the way the game gently guides you in a way that never leaves you feeling overwhelmed, but also never limits where you can go or what you can do, is truly a groundbreaking achievement for open world design. No floating markers pointing towards "objectives," it never comes even remotely close to feeling like a modern open-world "checklist" game. And yet, no matter where you go, you'll find something interesting. Not just little pockets of "content," there to amuse you for a bit before you go onto the next thing, but pieces of a giant puzzle. Parts of a whole. Everything is related to everything. Everything you do is carefully designed to leave you curious about something else, or sometimes several things.

In fact, curiosity and satisfaction are the central drive of the game. You don't get new items, or level up, or anything like that. You're rewarded for your expeditions with new knowledge about the world of the game, and that's it -- yet there's this tremendous sense of progress you get as you visit each location, tackle each puzzle or platforming challenge or tricky flight maneuver, and come to understand a little bit more about the mysteries of the universe. It's like a book that you can start on any page, and, as long as you read it all eventually, then no matter what order you read it in, the plot feels perfectly paced, and unfolds in a way that feels "right." You get hints about what you'll find on which pages, and you can go to those pages if you think they might contain something you want to learn about next. Or you can flip to a random page and see what's written there. And no matter what, it all works.

Every inch of this game is overflowing with narrative significance, but the story and the gameplay are woven together so masterfully, they become the same thing. I don't think I've ever seen another game do that before.

And the emotions I felt by the end. The ending! I highly suggest you avoid spoilers if you can. Read as little as possible about it. Go in blind for the best experience.

Anyway, you need to play this game if you haven't.

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I'm not under the influence. I'm adjacent to the influence

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I think about something similar whenever I go to the john. Or drink a cup of joe. Who was Joe the coffee lover? Who was John the pooper?

i love the term "joshing." it's slang, meaning to joke or tease playfully. "i'm just joshing you." who is this notorious josh. who joshed so much that the whole concept got named after him

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one of my favorite twitter accounts that is defunct now is it was this account called like Crazy Optical Illusions or something and they would just post popular optical illusions but edit them so they werent optical illusions anymore and they would just pretend and people would be very confused / angry in the comments

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I'm getting my friends into death note

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Woah wait, paste this into Google:

google_logo G_logo o_logo o_logo g_logo l_logo e_logo google_g

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And then 32 years later...

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wwwwww

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This bottle of orange juice was too tall for the shelf in my fridge so I was like "I know, I'll drink some and then it'll fit!"

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Giving a shit means caring about something, but taking a shit just means pooping. If you do something for shits and giggles, you're doing it for fun, but when you're ready to take something seriously, you'll need to get your shit together. If you shit a brick, it means you're scared or surprised. If you're in deep shit, you're in trouble. If you talk shit or shit on something, it means you're talking negatively about it. And if you have shit to do, you could be doing literally anything.

english slang is awful i would hate to be learning this shit. like the word shit. something can be horseshit or bullshit which means it's a lie. but cow shit is just poop. and something can be dogshit which means it's really bad quality. but cat shit is just poop.

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If you're a cool teen, don't insert a bean 😎

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Wait, this is ACTUALLY ON IBM'S WEBSITE?

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I was on the last spell card 😭

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Hmm...

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I just got a very strange flash of a memory of being a little kid learning how to read, thinking the local grocery store, Grand Union, was called Grand Onion

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I think the cat might be Mr. Krabs

In Emmy Award winning British science fiction sitcom Red Dwarf, Rimmer is Squidward and Lister is SpongeBob.