Right before the pandemic shut everything down, two good friends took me aside and invited me over to introduce me to a video game called Outer Wilds. They gave me no introduction, and instead just sat me at the console, thrust a controller into my hands, and watched me play. For hours. What game is so good that it's worth watching someone else play it, even though you've finished it already? Outer Wilds, apparently.
I don't normally commit myself to the sort of involved complex game that takes 20+ hours to beat, but I could tell this one was special.
I didn't have the requisite hardware to play it at home, and the looming shelter-in-place and upending of society distracted me with other things for a year, but Helen and I picked it up again a few months ago, and it is truly an amazing game.
The game is part space travel physics simulation and part unravel-the-mystery-of-an-ancient-lost-civilization, but that isn't what makes it special. The game is special because it has the most gentle possible mechanics for guiding the plot forward; it's crafted in such a way that there are never explicit quests, and you rarely feel like you're on rails, but you're instead guided by your natural curiosity towards the deeper mysteries of the universe, an invisible gravitational landscape of wonder and revelation that pulls you in gradually as you orbit its many centers. You can learn about everything in almost any order, but the creators have calibrated the difficulty of each mystery such that your probabilistic path through the game will be one that creates a pleasing narrative of building revelations. You also rarely feel lost or bored, like you're trying to brute-force search anything; there's always a handful of open threads to explore. The lead designer has a very interesting talk about how the team designed the game to evoke a feeling of curiosity, and I believe there are plenty of interesting lessons here for product designers outside the gaming space.
Here it is:
[minor spoilers]
The game is also special because it starts out as an adorably nerdy lovable game with Pixar-level ingenuity and attention to detail, and then before you know it you're socked with a deep sense of sadness and loss that you didn't know was possible in a game with few characters and limited social interaction.
If you want a sense of this, watch the review below. It might be the best summary of the game I've seen, and unlike any review I've ever seen before:
[minor spoilers that progress to major spoilers in the second half]
If you can make the time, check it out, and marvel at the creativity of this group of independent first-time game designers.