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Comment by sanitycheck | Hacker News Reader

I tried this with my wife, after 10 mins she had a headache and never wanted to touch it again. I love the graphics but they are jarring to a lot of people. (My wife's not a "gamer" but has spent hundreds of hours in Borderlands and Minecraft over the years.)

She got all the way through "The Case of the Golden Idol" though, which is a totally different experience but probably uses similar bits of the brain. I'll try her on Pentiment next, but I suspect she'll get bored quickly.

I think Outer Wilds is brilliant, but the ability required to precisely control that spaceship is way beyond any casual player.

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I really don't get people who have a lot of trouble with the Outer Wilds ship controls. Is it just that people don't expect Newtonian mechanics and treat it like FreeSpace or something?

Then again, I'm the kind of person who plays DCS, has over 350 sends in Getting Over It (one left handed), and flies the VTOL VR AH-94 with SAS off, so I'm probably not a good baseline.

To be fair, a lot of modern games over simplify controls for a large variety of gameplay elements. I think its an expectations thing. The closest games I played that share Outer Wilds control complexity are the original Lunar Lander, Solar Jetman, and Space Engineers.

The Case of the Golden Idol was such a sleeper hit for me last year. I'm always looking for more games that capture the same feeling that Outer Wilds and Obra Dinn did and Golden Idol absolutely scratched that itch in the best way!

If you haven't seen it, I recommend checking out The Forgotten City. The time loop/learning more each "run" reminded me of Outer Wilds, and I enjoyed the story/mystery.

https://forgottencitygame.com/

I missed out on outer wilds because I watched someone else play it. Haven't heard of the forgotten city yet.

It looks right up my alley, thanks for the recommendation.

You mean those casual players who, after a bit of time spent familiarizing with controls, can control things like Flappy Bird or all those running-jumping-three-lanes-with-obstacles mobile games with near-pixel perfection, putting even seasoned "serious" players to shame? :)

The Outer Wilds ship controls are not too complicated, but the player needs motivation to get used to them initially.

Hmm... In Outer Wilds your ship is moving in 3D space, close to objects with gravity (some of them moving) and you control thrust and rotation on multiple axes while looking through a small porthole.

In Flappy Bird you repeatedly press a single button to flap.

I don't think they're remotely comparable, but YMMV!

You’re talking about games that have extremely limited axis of movement, while yes anyone can eventually go extremely fast with them, initially your options are so limited that learning is trivial.

Outer Wilds is one of the few games with truly 3D movement as part of it’s blood. Not just a jump but a jetpack and ship that demand traversal of the third dimension. And I’ve taught enough people who are new to games over my life to know how hard they find using a controller in a game with more simple set ups initially. Outer Wilds…a casual gamer could probably learn it, but to someone who has rarely used a controller or mouse/keyboard movement in a gaming context it would be quite a bit more difficult.

Game is totally worth it though.

I am a filthy casual and I can control the Outer Wilds spaceship just fine? I don't think it has to do with gamerness.

I get stuck on the puzzles and give up for a while (days, weeks, months), because I only can get through a single rebirth or maybe 2 per play session (due to my casualness, other commitments, etc). But every time I come back, I can fling the ship around the system no prob, just can't remember enough of what I did last time to progress.

On the other hand, my son smashes every vehicle in every game into every wall he can find. That boy needs some driving lessons, stat.

Yeah the ship controls are the major barrier. They tweaked it a bit at some point and it’s better, also much prefer mouse and keyboard to controller personally. Trying to fly the ship was where my boyfriend flunked out of outer wilds.

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