Outward Retrospective – Hardships and High Stakes

As part of their effort to highlight some of the more notable video games released in 2019, PC Gamer brings us this article dedicated to Nine Dots Studio’s survival-focused RPG Outward. If you’d like to learn what makes the game unique and worthy of your attention, especially now that it’s been out for a while and can boast a sizable content update, you should check the article out. A few sample paragraphs:

Outward does things differently than most games, beginning with what happens when you lose a fight. In the fantasy RPG from Nine Dots Studio, you don’t die when your hit points drop to zero (unless you’re using the permadeath mode added back in October). Instead, you fall unconscious and wake up somewhere else. A mysterious benefactor may have dragged you to a warm campfire, a passing traveler may have carried you to a town, or you might wake up in a bandit’s prison, dazed and battered, and have to stealthily gather your gear and escape.

These outcomes result in losing some time, consuming some precious supplies to return yourself to good health, and having to travel—sometimes a considerable distance—to get back to the fight you lost just to try again. Which in a way, makes falling unconscious much more punishing than simply dying and reloading a saved game.

This is especially unusual, and surprisingly effective, considering the deep survival systems in Outward. It doesn’t seem like a survival game would work if you can’t actually die. But since you can’t fast-travel, and since maintaining your health and stamina is a real struggle in the harsh world, even minor enemy encounters feel fraught with real peril, and every small victory feels like a major triumph.