This game barely gets a thumbs up from be (mainly because its a new concept, nice art, nice music etc.). The biggest problem is that the game is 90% based on luck. No matter how good you are at the game, you always depend on luck to constantly find planets with enough fuel, iron and oxygen.
Just be prepared to get frustrated a lot. For example even though you captured an amazing new ship, spent a lot of time discovering new technology, collecting the rare resources to build tech upgrades etc. etc. And then, bam, a random event makes you lose half of your fuel, and you end up in a solar system without any gas planets. Game over in two turns, and nothing you could do about it. This happens A LOT!
Unfortunately, the devs don't wanna hear anything about it. check the forums, they wanna keep this game a game of chance, to somehow show you the "thoughness" of space travel or whatever. I think its sad, the game could be so much better and more skill based...
I hope modders will fix it, like it happened with FTL.

This is more a mixed review than a negative one.

I bought Out There because it looked similar to FTL, but without the tedium of combat, and in that respect it did not disappoint. Like the starship Voyager, you jump from system to system trying to replenish limited resources, and along the way you meet alien lifeforms and learn new technologies that increase your chances of reaching home. I think the game aptly portrays the feeling of isolation in space, from the ambient soundtrack to the uneasy log entries of the protagonist, a lone astronaut who wakes from cryo-sleep to find himself far across the galaxy.

However, in going from FTL to Out There, I seem to have traded one form of monotony for another. Drilling rocky planets yields iron to repair your hull, but landing on and leaving those planets costs additional fuel. Probing gas giants yields fuel necessary to travel from system to system, but orbiting those planets damages your ship's hull. If either resource (or oxygen) reaches zero, your session ends. Drill, probe, drill, probe. From my experience so far- about three hours- I'd say this routine forms the bulk of each session, which I personally find uninteresting.

There never seems to be enough space to really exploit the technologies you learn on most ship types. Each technology takes up one slot, and most of the ships I've seen so far have no more than a dozen total. Not to mention, around five of those slots will always be taken up by your most essential ship systems. In addition, each unique element / resource takes up its own slot regardless of how little you have of each, and some technologies require multiple elements for construction. Keep in mind the technologies you learn each session are randomized, so you won't know which metals you'll need at the outset, either. Often I just didn't bother with technology so I could stockpile the three basic necessities, since each slot only stacks up to twenty, and you often need more.

When you meet alien lifeforms, you're usually presented with a choice of Approve or Disapprove, but because you don't know the languages spoken, and because translated words don't carry over from session to session, you may as well flip a coin unless you're writing down all the words you learn on the side. The other events with choices feel equally arbitrary, though I acknowledge this was also built into the design of FTL and may not faze everyone.

In short, if the premise and feeling of the game are what interest you, and the above issues don't bother you, there's a good chance you'll enjoy Out There. If what you're looking for is mechanical depth and varied gameplay, I'd caution you to take a closer look before buying.

It plays a lot like FTL but focuses more on exploration so it's pretty chill. It feels like a mix of No Man's Sky and FTL minus the combat.

I can see why people would get frustrated at this game. Discovering new tech, lifeforms, and planets is satisfying, but In the end it's technically RNG. The strategy is all about priorities. It requires good inventory management. You have to balance the collection of rare resources to build new tech, space in your ship, and vital resources like fuel and oxygen. You have to judge when it's best to invesigate and land on planets and do random events vs. just moving on, ignoring everything except vital resources and then racing towards the end until you have to slow down because of bad luck, then possibly adding or replacing tech because you get a new ship or discover something worth taking time to craft. It creates a nice cadence.

The story is pretty good. Each time you get to a new solar system there's a random event. Sometimes it's choices you can make, but other times it's just story elements about what you as the character are going through being in such desolate isolation for months, even years depending on how long you take, and how your sanity begins to degrade. You start hallucinating, stuff like that.

If you have a really good run, the game is beatable in as little as 2 hours start to finish, but it would be incredibly rare to finish in a single run the first time around. I've only beaten it once so am not sure if there are multiple endings, but the one I got was satisfying.

It has a fair amount of replayability as well. For $10 I think it was worth it.

Relies way way too much on RNG for "difficulty". You never know when it might just arbitrarily decide to end your game through no real fault of your own. Even when you think you're doing really well you could be two random "events" or one bad planet line up from death. Since you always begin with the same ship and tech there's no way to try different strategies or approachs. You're just relying on the RNG to be kind enough to let you live.

Out There is an amazing experience. Deeply atmospheric with perfect soundtrack, short presentation which explains the whole setting ideally and at the core is an immensely satisfying roguelike game. Hardest I have played yet, 1 successful completion in about 50+ restarts. I have encountered only five or so repeated events in countless amounts with very imaginative and entertaining writing (honestly, astonishing!).

To make a simple comparison with FTL (Faster Than Light, game which I adore) Out There = FTL - combat part. Yet it's in no aspect lacking survival experience with stellar amounts of interstellar travel perils.

Sidenote takeway: thanks to Out There, now I know the difference and relation of Landau-Oppenheimer-Volkoff limit and Chandrasekhar limit to neutron stars, black holes, white dwarfs and other stellar phenomena.

8.5/10

Tonally, this game is great, the artwork, writing and overall theme all work well, creating a distinctive and engaging atmosphere of loneliness and mystery.

Unfortunately, for me, the experience stopped there. As a game, this simply does not work. Options are limited and an impossible slide into defeat can only be turned aside by technological advancement, or stumbling across a new ship. If you do that in a timely fashion the game changes from impossibly difficult to trivially easy.

A successful roguelike or roguelite can definitely tolerate some of the design decions present in Out There, the reverse difficulty curve of a tough start and easy late game can work well - just look at FTL or XCOM. A heavy reliance on randomness is also not in-and-of-itself a deal breaker, so long as that random element can be mitigated through player knowledge and a transparent game mechanic.

Unfortunately Out There does not provide this mitigation. Luck is luck. If you need fuel and you don't come across a fuel source, you're done. If you need a ship upgrade and the game doesn't decide to give you one, you're done. There's no consistent and gradual accrual of resources, no ability to cut your losses when your choices aren't working out, you roll the dice and after 20 minutes you are told you're a winner or loser.

For me, that's not fun.

On top of that the game features a highly opaque resource management system that consists of micro managing whether you spend 1 to 10 fuel for an unspecified risk and unspecified reward when mining for metals or probing for gases. This system doesn't provide player engagement, or meaningful feedback on how your choices work and how to improve them in the future. It doesn't even provide basic informantion on the chances of success or failure. Given the large amount of the gameplay that this mechanic constitutes, I found the complete lack of player engagement baffling.

Out There: Ω Edition is a resource management rogue-like game which recently released on Steam after huge success on mobile platforms. In Out There: Ω Edition you play as an astronaut who has just woken up from cryogenic stasis on a journey from Earth to Ganymede, you quickly realise you've gone horribly off course and you're nowhere near your destination, you're out there. You must carefully manage your fuel, oxygen and hull in order to stay alive in an unexplored galaxy, along the way you will not only find remnants of the human race who have mysteriously vanished but you will also find alien races and alien artifacts never before seen by man. Out There: Ω Edition is a story about the survival of one man who is way out of his depth on a journey that shouldn't have taken place.

This game has a fair few similarities to FTL: Faster Than Light, in fact it's these similarities that made me buy the game, so you'll see me compare the two games a couple of times over the course of the review. I'm a huge fan of anything Space related and this title did not disappoint

+Gorgeous art style
+Everything in the game is well designed, in particular the ships and the alien life forms
+There are several different ships, each coming with pros and cons meaning each ship has a unique play style
+Usually when you jump to a new star system you get a journal entry/mini text adventure which all have great stories but they're let down by the writer's knowledge of English (I'll come back to that later)
+The galaxy is procedurally generated each time you play so you'll never see the same galaxy twice
+Interesting storyline with an interesting yet mysterious protagonist
+Outstanding (even outstanding doesn't do it justice) soundtrack that even rivals that of FTL
+Great gameplay based around resource management, kind of like FTL with more resources and no combat
+The game has no combat, a bold move that work fantastically, fighting to survive against the environment is much more interesting than fighting to survive against hostile life forms
+As you get further into a run you begin unlocking more advanced technologies to help you get further
+Abandoned ships always seem to turn up just as your ship becomes obsolete which is perfect
+When you encounter alien life forms you often learn parts of their language
+You frequently come across mysterious alien materials and artifacts which often provide ways of improving your ship
+It's impossible to see everything this game has to offer in one run so you're definitely going to come back for more

+/-When something goes wrong, such as your Hydrogen probe being destroyed, it's incredibly unlikely that you're gonna make it since when something goes wrong in this game EVERYTHING goes wrong

-The game is riddled with poor grammar and spelling mistakes which really takes away from the fantastic story in this game, in all fairness the Dev is foreign and English is probably his/her second language but I still don't see why they couldn't have had someone proof read the game

Verdict:
9

Despite the game's numerous spelling errors and grammatical errors this is a fantastic resource management game with a gorgeous art style and fantastic design.

El K.

Out There: Ω Edition is unplayable due to a UI issue related to drag and drop. Several users have reported the issue in the official bug report discussion, but the developer has yet to acknowledge the problem (let alone address it).

https://youtu.be/uhiGCNRIhKI

You awaken from cryogenic sleep on your journey from the moon to Jupiter only to discover that you're not in our solar system anymore. You've traveled "Out There." Its now up to you to explore a new galaxy and find your way back home. Out There: Omega Edition boils down to a combatless, inventory management game in a beautiful space setting with randomized solar systems and events. For your survival, you need to manage your cargo while maintaining fuel, oxygen and hull to stay alive. Its an easy and relaxing game to play, relying on mostly button presses with your mouse or touch pad. Death is permanent, but since the game is randomized, you'll have a personal story to tell each time you play.

While exploring this strange new galaxy, you'll find abandon space ships that you can take as your own. You'll be required to take a look at your ship in order to manage your inventory with ship components and your cargo. To refuel, repair and oxygenate your spaceship you'll need to click and drag minerals from your cargo and drag them to the maintenance. Its just that simple. Each ship has different requirements for its hull and fuel. Most require helium or hydrogen for the fuel and iron for the hull. Helium will refuel the ship faster. The inventory is a grid and you can click an empty square on the grid to craft additional components from schematics that you'll find scattered throughout the galaxy. Components can also be dismantled for their minerals which is helpful when you abandon your ship for another one.

Minerals stack up to twenty per square. Its odd in a way that twenty hydrogen takes up the same space as twenty platinum or iron. You have no weight limit either. Just a grid limit. Different ships have different grids. Smaller ships have less of a grid, but consume less fuel. I found smaller ships to survive far longer than larger ones strictly for their fuel consumption.

On your way, you'll encounter anomalies that will send you on quests, none of which I've seen through to the end, even after six hours of playing. They're always at the furthest reaches of the galaxy, like your ultimate goal. You'll also meet aliens in picture form and learn words to their unique language.

While the solar systems get randomized or "rogue-like," the map of the galaxy isn't. Its the same galaxy time and time again. You'll encounter the same blue giants, red, yellow and white dwarves, black holes and super novas every time you play. Your ship has a radius that it can travel and if a system is in the radius you can travel there at the cost of fuel and oxygen.

Each solar system can consist of random rock planets, gas giants, anomalies, garden planets and a star (or black hole). Even when you're in these solar systems you need to spend a set amount of fuel and oxygen to orbit and visit the locations. Everything amounts to a beautiful background scene with your ship over it. Again, its nothing fancy, but it does do a good job of a space ambiance.You'll never know what's in a solar system until you visit. Nor will your ship remember what was in a solar system. There is of course a ship component to analyze solar systems.

Gas giants are the most important, they're how you'll get precious fuel. Even visiting them will damage your hull. To get the fuel, you send out a probe and you're given a choice how big of a probe. The larger the probe, the more fuel you'll get. Always spend the maximum amount of fuel on a probe. Otherwise it will never return with enough fuel. Ever. The larger the probe, the easier it is to return damaged or get destroyed. You can easily repair anything broken with iron that you have on board. Even if a probe gets destroyed, you can recover its components and use iron to make a new one. Its a small price to pay to have more than enough fuel on board. Its a constant struggle in the game. You can probe over and over, but the yield will be half of your last attempt, making it ineffective.

Rock planets are how you obtain iron and other resources, but nothing feels as important as iron. To get the minerals you'll have to orbit the planet, then land. When you're done you'll have to take off and all these procedures cost fuel and oxygen. Again, this is an inventory management game. When you're on the planet, you need to drill much like probing. Always use the largest drill to get the most yield.

Garden planets are the most interesting. You can land on them to instantly replenish your oxygen, drill for different types of minerals, but more importantly, there's life here. You can speak with inhabitants and while they don't speak your language, you'll learn a word or two from them; even give them things or receive schematics or the Omega from them. This Omega is special and can be used to repair things amongst other interesting things further in the game. The garden planets have different minerals that are used for components most of the time.

In terms of components, some of them feel useless, but there are others like shield generators and wormhole generators that feel more useful. You can improve fuel efficiency and other things all through components. The only down side is some components require others, so that's two slots from your cargo used.

When drilling or probing, you're forced to take or abandon things without having the ability to use my maintenance to fuel or repair your ship. It seems only logical that I deliver hydrogen straight from the probe to my maintenance, but instead I need to jettison something from a full cargo hold.

In terms of anomalies, those are abandon ships, quests or cubes. The cubes will replenish one specific thing whether its fuel, oxygen or your hull. They're very helpful and give you a reason to always live dangerously with low fuel, oxygen or hull hoping to find a cube. Visiting stars themselves will heavily damage your ship and it doesn't seem like there's a use for them unless you get a ship component that lets you fly through a black hole or harvest the power of a white dwarf or something. Other anomalies will wormhole your ship to a different solar system.

When you get to each solar system, sometimes there's a random event will play out through text. Sometimes you're given a choice. Things like you're being attacked, do you hide or flee. Again, there is no combat, so your choice determines does your hull get damaged or do you expend extra fuel escaping? The game recaps what you've gained or lost. With everything playing out via text and the fact that you travel from one star to the next, Out There can feel like a single player board.

The game is beautiful, vivid, colorful backdrops of space, planets and other celestial bodies. It feels spacy with great ambient music and that's all you really need for any space game. Just give a feeling of isolation and gorgeous backdrops. Its a place you can sink a lot of time into.

Depending how far you get, the game will shake things up a bit with hostile aliens that will conquer planets. You won't be able to visit these planets, making a tough game even harder with no difficulty settings.

Now for the major problem that I had, your ship has a radius that you can only jump so far in. About 30 minutes into each play through, I'd come across dead end after dead end. The galactic map never changes, so you can remember your route and where not to go. You need to start relying on random luck to find schematics for worm hole generators or anomalies that will randomly teleport you to places. This makes the game feel unbeatable unless you have luck. Back tracking seems like a brutal death sentence.

For anyone that can get into the game, its a good, relaxing time sink that will keep you playing again and again. There's so much here, but unless you can find a new ship or efficiently manage your fuel, you'll be doomed. That still won't stop you from continuing to explore the outermost galaxies of Out There. I'd like to thank Delphine and Plug In Digital for my copy of the game.

Many people recommended this game as like FTL but more narrative driven and without combat. While this is accurate, the narrative is barely more interesting than FTL's and combat is replaced by a repetitive resource mining game. In fact, the pattern of mining for fuel, jump, mining for fuel, jump etc is most of the game. It was fun for a bit, but im glad i got it on sale for 5$. Played it for one afternoon and then got bored.