Outer Wilds Has Always Been A Rad Idea
15/10/19 Update - added in extra clarification from Alex regarding world design.
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We often see very little behind the development curtain with most video games. The first we tend to hear about them is through some form of marketing - or if we’re lucky, a little earlier thanks to Press Sneak Fucks. Turns out though that early footage of one of 2019’s indie darlings, Outer Wilds, has been kicking around since 2012.
Outer Wilds, a space exploration game featuring a time loop at the end of the universe, began life as a student project called “Spaceworthy” in 2011, before becoming Creative Lead Alex Beachum's thesis game in 2012 as Outer Wilds. Alex was kind enough to answer some questions I had about Outer Wilds' early development, in particular surrounding these early presentations and prototypes.
While the game has gone through many iterations since its humble beginnings, it’s fascinating to see how much of the core premise of Outer Wilds existed from the very start.
(Warning: spoilers for Outer Wilds flow freely beyond this point!)
From the jump, Outer Wilds already had so many of the core fundamentals in place that make the game unique. The time loop was always designed to be around 20 minutes, and the player was always meant to slowly discover information about an ancient race as they explored. Even something as small as the telescope existed in much the same way as it does today, including the ability to hone in on certain sounds.
Fascinatingly, many of the planets were already conceived of in 2012. The above video features the Hourglass Twins, Brittle Hollow & Hollow’s Lantern, Giants Deep - there's even a small glimpse of the White/Black Hole at 3:38 to 3:41.
“The loose idea for each planet was actually created before we knew the story beats,” Alex mentions. “It was a puzzle of inventing a history for an existing physical environment. For example, we decided the Nomai should crash in Dark Bramble because that just seemed like the best place for them to crash!”
Outer Wilds was very much a game of systems before it became the Big Idea narrative it holds today, though the fundamentals were in place quite early in the process. “The major story beats were mostly decided in 2012 and 2013 (Nomai arrive and crash, escape pods are launched, quantum moon discovered, orbital probe cannon and ash twin project designed, comet arrives, etc...), but a LOT of specifics were worked out later (like the Quantum Moon being the Eye's moon or the Nomai using warp cores to recreate time travel).”
While the ideas of the planets were in place very early, the more detailed clockwork design of the planets was built to suit the story Outer Wilds wants to tell. “Even though we started out by fitting the story around the planet design, the pendulum definitely swung the other way when it came to specific level design (e.g. the Hanging City was totally redesigned after the Alpha based on the story beats you find there in the final game). And of course the Nomai tone and characters didn’t exist until our writer started fleshing them out over the last four years. Not that a lot of ideas weren’t there early, but it took a lot of talented people to polish them into something actually worth playing.”
Mechanically, frictionless "Newtonian physics" modeled space flight was already built in to the game, with gravity and speed relativity already locked down. The ship’s landing camera and the players jetpack had already been prototyped.
The game’s style always had an extremely strong foundation in its concept art; from the alpine village look of Timber Hearth, to the Interploper comet and it’s frozen exterior, the entwined nature of the hourglass twins - even the islands and colours of Giant’s Deep.
Some things were similar, with ideas being tweaked to better fit the story Outer Wilds tells. As Alex mentioned in the pitch, the probe firing at the beginning of the time loop always existed - though it originally was crashing to the surface of your planet, rather than firing off into space as it does in the final build.
The demo also hints at the idea of some pieces of the environment being context sensitive in their activation - for example, a crystal on a wall needed to be activated by sunlight, which would only happen after parts of Brittle Hollow had been hit by meteors. The idea seemed intriguing, but when asked Alex laughed and noted that it was a little smoke and mirrors for the occasion.
“That crystal mechanic was a complete hail Mary for that particular presentation. We needed something to show that was time-based so we were like "uh, what if you have to wait for sunlight to hit this crystal?" There were never plans to make that a major mechanic.”
An even earlier video shows that Outer Wilds was originally set to be a game revolving around preparation before heading out on each adventure. Initially, an inventory system was planned to be implemented, which would require the player to think ahead and choose specific items to take with them before exploring each loop.
“The inventory stuff was reaaaaally early. Preparing for an expedition was a big part of the original conception of the game. We had ideas for different types of jetpacks and probes you could take with you depending on where you planned to explore. Those ideas were scrapped organically as we moved away from evading procedural hazards and focused more on the clue and knowledge based structure that you see in the final game.”
Given how well the game keeps the friction between loops minimal, this seemed to be a smart design decision. “Pretty much the preparation stuff didn't quite fit with the idea of ‘the only reward for exploration is knowledge’“.
Procedural hazards sat neatly alongside the idea of “sandcastle” planets, or a more random take on changes to the universe between loops. Brittle Hollow is still very much beholden to the idea - parts of its surface break at different times through each loop, based on the meteors’ trajectories - but there were plans to include more randomness in the design.
“Other planets ended up being less procedural, and that's in part because we decided to not randomize elements in the solar system between loops (this is largely because we decided to make the time loop part of the story as opposed to a non-diegetic reset). The more we focused on making the time loop make sense in-world, the less it made sense to have randomized elements (beyond those that still make sense, like the meteors). Early on we considered giving planets random orbits, [but it was] hard to justify that without just throwing up your arms and yelling ‘video games!’“
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Notions of other travelers with instruments, the universe ending in the final moments of the time loop, exploration based gameplay with no combat - all core to Outer Wilds, all have always been central to the game’s early design.
The game being based around a 4th dimension, time, was essential from the beginning - Alex even cites The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask in the initial pitch. It was important to factor not only where the player was exploring, but when, into the design of Outer Wilds. Worlds would evolve over time, changing rapidly through the ~20 minute loop.
Even that iconic music by Andrew Prahlow has been a key part of the game for many years.
Possibly the coolest part of the September video is the concept of Quantum Mechanics - from this early on, the novel idea of objects moving around space when you aren’t looking at them was a key feature of Outer Wilds. So key in fact that it ended up being quite an important aspect of the end of the game - something that wasn’t always the case.
“The ending was always the ending (as of 2012) in the loosest sense. Like, we knew thematically what was going to happen. The specifics were originally very different. The Eye was initially a physical object (not quantum) that had broken into two pieces and the question was going to be ‘what happens if I put them back together?’ We ended up making the Eye quantum because it's supposed to be the strangest thing in the game and we realized we weren't going to come up with a stranger mechanic than the quantum stuff.”
Through some of Alex’s early Alpha build trailers, the utterly terrifying anglerfish stood (swam?) ever present. It begged the question - why anglerfish?
“The giant anglerfish were from this early world-building project (at the time it was meant to be a standalone school assignment) where instead of ‘camping in space’ it was ‘fishing in space’. Your ship even had this weird hook thing on the back, even though there were no fishing mechanics implemented. The anglerfish got pulled into Outer Wilds but the nautical elements were replaced with a camping aesthetic.”
Being one of the most recognizable aspects of the game, that camping aesthetic was solidified extremely early on in the 7 years worth of development Outer Wilds went through; it has always been crucial that the player be able to sit down at a campfire, roast a marshmallow and watch the sun go supernova.
“The marshmallows were pretty early too. I was having a hard time coming up with ideas to prototype, so one of my colleagues suggested I make an "emotional prototype" to focus on the tone. That lead to the creation of a prototype where you roast a marshmallow while the sun explodes, and the ideas [just] stuck.”
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If you enjoyed this look into Outer Wilds, you can check out our review of the game here, and our piece on Witnessing The End - Messages & Meaning From Outer Wilds here. Thanks for reading!