Island Off Outer Darkness

An incredibly overlooked gem! So glad that I heard about it.

A very fun and unique game.

A very special experience. The combination of the unique setting, engaging characters and writing, and evocative atmosphere and music made for a game I played obsessively until completion. It's slow, more akin to a visual novel than a full on game minus some platforming sections. For the right person though, this will be magic. Highly highly recommended.

I play a lot of games. Yet most of them have no heart or feel hollow. This is not true of this game. While not a direct comparison, this gives me similar vibes to one of my all time favorite games — 1000xResist. Nothing has scratched that itch since then but its my closest comparison with the weird yet oddly familiar world, diverse cast of broken characters, somber tone, atmospheric OST, and awesome visual aesthetics. Thank you developer for creating this masterpiece! May it continue to be found and enjoyed.

It's got atmosphere for days. It's got a farming minigame. It's got a guy that is a horse and also gay. What more could anyone want???????

excellent excellent. such a vivid portrait of a resentful, isolated little town for the unwanted and unwanting. the first strand-type game to actually grapple with the concept properly and thoroughly

Man where to begin on this one. A friend pointed me in this games direction after catching wind of it on a podcast thinking it was up my alley (it sure was). I think the quick review is that I'm going to find it really weird going forward and wanting to talk about and reference this game with people and then having to remind myself its not something everyone has played. It truly does feel like something that should have had a cult following long before I found it. It feels like all the ingredients are there. I remember at one point thinking "damn people who were into HS 15 years ago would love this" before shuddering and then also realizing that media is cited in the inspirations. I liked this game a lot. I am unfortunately a sucker for "walk round real slow and talk to folk in a strange place", it will come to no surprise to anyone that overall I enjoyed the experience with NITW and KR0 in my top 10. Everyone is just so interesting. And the setting is just so interesting. The level and depth of world building is just so majorily impressive for a developer that was like 20? when he dropped this. I spent every day checking in with every character just to ensure I wouldn't miss a single detail about them. A good majority of the characters are their own little flavor of unpleasant. I love the player character and the horse so much. What an exceptional little universe. I am having a hell of a time trying to structure this reccomendation because there's a point in which the game takes a direction that has taken me a while to sort of arrange my thoughts about. And even then the breadth of thoughts are too difficult to articulate or sort nicely or produce something that is helpful to anyone eyeing up the game. I think ultimately this will be more for myself and will probably just divolve into throwing down disjointed thoughts so you can probably consider the recommendation portion of this done. [spoiler]There is a character that talks like (for lack of a better explanation) a man having a breakdown online. He's probably the most insufferable one behind the nationalist. But there were bits and pieces in there that were hitting, stuff about being so affected by people you've never even met, almost thoughts/idea or contructions of people which then shape aspects of your life so profoundly, which started hitting home a little more than I was comfortable with. In a bold move the curtain is ripped away and it is spelt out to you, directly and OOC, that the game is a retelling of real life relationships the developer has had with an online community that has meant a lot to him which ulitmately fell apart. The first moment we are introduced to this I initally found to be a bit offputting. It almost felt like a callout blog post being dropped in realtime in the middle of your game. A little unmeasured and a little jarring. Which then sort of lead to a re-examination of why I was feeling this way about this style of delivery and having to unpack some stuff I was now projecting onto someone speaking openly about struggles that had affected them so deeply, over the delivery. Like quite a bit of self examination and unpicking. Was not expecting to be signing up for that trip when I started the game. Following this reveal my relationship with the game changed. I played through the game a second time with developer notes on interested in getting some insight into just how much of this game was shaped by this revelation. As it turns out a majority of it. I think in doing so some of it lost some of its mystique or magic. But I think that is to be expected when you get such a big behind-the-scene look into the process. Things you thought were just great bits that were conjured up from the ether by the writer's genius become more like thinly obscured retellings of something that literally just happened at some point (don't get me wrong, really interesting retellings). Its a tradeoff and what I got in return was a walk in another artists shoes through his process and experiences making his art. And honestly its been eye opening. If I were to be oblivious to it all and just have had that first playthrough, sure maybe the vibe or mystery would have been preserved, but I don't think I would have gotten as much as I have out of this experience. Which leads me to what didn't quite land as well for me. I think as a result of this game drawing so strongly from these personal experiences, there is a lot of moments that I felt left out of some kind of inside joke. Because that's kind of what was happening, in reality a lot of aspects of the game were inside jokes sourced straight from this ex-community. And that was maybe fine throughout the game. But the ending suffers from this particularly hard. On first playthough I felt like something was missing but I've enjoyed media that has ended just as abstractly so it was fine. (spoiler) On second playthrough dev notes explain the thing at the center of all of the happenings in the game is yet another carry over from the aforementioned community project and you sort of just kinda had to be there to understand it. I don't love this. Up until DC, IOOD felt like a character and setting driven experience, forgoing some kind of central plot thread. DC appears and kind of gives it this, at which point I had gone from "on-board" to "incredibly on-board". But in the end this second wind the game gets doesn't quite culminate to something I personally thought did everything that came before it justice.[/spoiler] The only other thing I wasn't too keen on was week 8. Everything about it is punishing gameplay-wise (visibility, platforming setbacks) and nothing should be punishing in a game that already demands an immense amount of understanding/forgiveness from the player for how slow everything is (which I personally don't have a hangup with, putting week 8 aside). If I'm remembering correctly at some point the dev expresses self awareness of the above critques in plaintext and man like I get it. This stuff is so ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ hard. Making games is so hard man. And I can't stress it enough that I'm so glad this is out here and I got to play it. I really really enjoyed this game. I know I will think about it often when I am trying to write myself. It will definitely make the leaderboard for media I call back to when trying to make sense of my own work. This whole this has given me so much to examine and think about in regards to art and creating in general. Really looking forward to everything Zug has in store in the future.