Out There: Omega Edition is a fantastic game that’s easy to learn, hard as hell to play and everything is random so you never get bored. You know, in case you plan on being a part of Jeopardy in the near future. What I found interesting is an underlying educational aspect in that the resources appear on the periodic table and you can start to learn about elements and their designations. You can combine units to a maximum of 20 per each block so you can combine a 16 unit block of oxygen with a 4 unit block to free up a space. You have a cargo hold that holds BOTH your technology and resources. The key thing to learn about your vessel is that it is extremely limited and space, ironically, is a factor in how you manage your resources. Everything else is used to create new technology, commit to upgrades, etc. Change up the dialog texts in ways that could give a clue about how the aliens speak and if they’re going to eat my liver.Įverything you do requires fuel (H or He) and most everything else requires oxygen (O) and if you enter hostile atmospheres you better have a supply of iron (Fe) because your hull requires it in order for you to repair the damage. Over time you get over it but I’ a firm believer in total immersion. It’s creepy and eerie cold and foreboding then you have Marvel Comic speech bubbles. These adds nothing to the atmosphere and seemed sort of goofy and out of place. One aspect that kind of irks me is the pop comic look of the navigation and text screens. You essentially have to be all judgy basing your interaction on appearances – sort of like dating on Plenty of Fish. But your new friends/enemies can also give you technology and upgrades so it’s worth taking the risk. The more you interact with aliens on breathable worlds the more you’ll begin to understand what they’re trying to say… if you live that long. You don’t know what they’re saying! They might be asking you to allow yourself be murdered. Your contact with alien life is little more than a language you can’t understand and a picture and the ability to Accept or Decline. Everything is text-based kind of like Zork on steroids (yes, I’m digging deep into gaming history – watch the first season of Halt and Catch Fire on AMC for a short course in it). There’s no shooting or combat, no movement outside of the same cut-scene animation between jumps to new locations. It’s as if the game’s authors don’t want you to win. The tutorial is rudimentary and will only give you the basics without any insight into how to manage your resources or how many upgrades or different technology is floating around for you to uncover. Gameplay is very easy to grasp, especially if you’ve played Mass Effect, which Out There’s movement and resource collection seems to have been based on. There you will learn your destiny and that of the human race. Your goal is to get to the marked system that was pointed out to you by the unmanned space station that you encounter. Thankfully, the game autosaves after every jump into a new system. That won’t do you any good as the game is pretty well randomized so the only thing you can do is take what you’ve learned about managing your resources and apply it to your next go around. Every turn could be your last and if you’re not smart about how you play it will be – and you’ll have to start over. Space is dark and inhospitable it doesn’t want you where you don’t belong. But something happens, naturally, and you’ll soon find yourself waking prematurely from cryogenic sleep and nowhere near your destination. You play a lone astronaut on his way to the moons of Jupiter. So what is Out There: Omega Edition? It is sci-fi exploration at its finest level with resource management and survival being the only true goals. There’s no combat so it’s you and you alone against this harsh environment. The original game has been given a complete visual overhaul, improved controls, and over 350 text-based adventures with four possible endings. After this success stationary fans are now blessed with a graphically enhanced version, Out There: Omega Edition, now touching base on PC, Mac, and Linux platforms via Steam. It put a fresh spin on something as mundane as resource gathering. French Developer, Mi-Clos, originally launched Out There on mobile devices in 2014 and it was a soaring smash hit having sold over 250,000 units.
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