I expected a less combat oriented FTL. Instead I got "probe for fuel simulator 2015".

I really wanted to, and tried to like this game. It starts out promising. You warp around a semi-linear path of stars, exploring planets looking for resources to upgrade your ship and fuel to keep going. It's got text-base events like FTL, limited slots to make you pick and choose what upgrades and cargo you take, a nice soundtrack, and great hand-drawn art style that I really liked.

Unfortunately. The gameplay mostly consists of clicking "probe" on gas giants to scoop up fuel until your ship is too damaged (orbiting a gas giant damages you), then wasting all the fuel you just mined landing on a rocky planet and pressing "drill" to scoop up almost, but not quite, enough iron repair the damage you took from the gas giants. Then you fly to the next system to repeat the process in an endless loop of tedium that eventually ends with you running out of fuel with no gas giant in sight, or crashing into a gas giant in a desperate gamble to mine one more load of fuel so you can mine one more load of iron to repair your hull that was damaged the last time you mined fuel.

Meanwhile, the "game" (such as it is) is also almost 100% pure RNG - significantly worse than FTL. The majority of maps feel like they are completely unwinnable no matter what you do due to bad random layouts, and spending 20 minutes grinding fuel and iron just to die because of something utterly out of your control such 2 bad random events in a row just feels so bad and offputting.

I can't recommend this game, unless you absolutely love tedious grinding and pure RNG combined in one.

It's a lovely game, simple but very atmospheric.
I thumb it down only because of the last patch which made all the soundtrack monophonic. Devs were supposed to fix that, but it's months now and they didn't, and they begun to completely ignore the requests.
Make no mistake, this game is 99% atmosphere, and 50% of it is soundtrack which in mono sounds so much worse. They could as well make the game black & white.
I'll happily flip the thumb up as soon as they fix it.

Too many recent reviews say "It relies too much on chance" Well tis a rogue like. If your buying a rogue like and dont like your games to rely on chance then theres something frankly with your expectations. Its a great rogue like. I loved it lot more than FLT due to its more compelling story of survival out there in the uncaring depths of space plus sub-plots and branching story choice endings. Theres also a nice little feature in the menu options to allow you to encounter ships where you previously died in. Leading to some interesting situations in using the resources/tech from the previous game helping with the critics "relies too much on luck" theme going on.

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.

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.

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.

I really wish I could have enjoyed this game more, my first 5-10 playthrough's were fantastic, and you get this great sense of exploration in an isolated, alien galaxy.

Sadly it's downfall is it's difficulty, not that difficulty is outright a bad thing, in fact it's part of the roguelike genre I love. But in this title your chances of survival are 90% luck, 10% follwing an identical formula for the best chances at success.

It's a game about exploration and discovery. Yet it just rips you down again and again, forcing you to repeat from the beginning. Which is basically the same strategy for the first 20-30 stars anyway, and quickly becomes monotonous. The difficulty would be bearable if there was a huge amount of gameplay variation, but you'll find yourself seeing repeated events constantly after only a few runs. But realistically even though there are a lot of events that happen, at the end of the day no matter what happens it can only affect your fuel, oxygen and hull. Which ultimately limits the game.

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.

In 2014, developer Mi-Clos Studio released Out There, a space exploration title for iOS and Android devices. The game was a critical hit, winning awards and gaining rave reviews across the board, with praise for the game’s story and depth. Out There was commercially successful too, selling over 250,000 copies worldwide.

Now the French developer released the acclaimed mobile title for PC, Mac, and Linux, with a wealth of new features and content available. Mi-Clos Studio is also making the new version, titled Out There: Omega Edition, free for any buyers of the original mobile-only build. Gamers who had yet to play the title now have the chance to encounter Out There beyond its mobile beginnings.

Out There is a space-based roguelike, placing a single player into the role of an astronaut who has become lost in an unknown part of the universe. The astronaut must travel to different stars, collecting fuel, oxygen and mineral supplies to try and survive. The end goal is to reach a distant system that promises to reveal secrets about not only the astronaut’s destiny, but the fate of mankind. Players face a procedurally-generated journey from system to system, meaning that each playthrough is different.

It is all to easy to compare Out There to FTL: Faster Than Light, another space-based roguelike. There are, however, a number of differences between the two games. Most importantly, Out There is devoid of combat, and players will not face firefights against opposing spacecraft. Although this may make it seem like players are in for an easy ride, the opposite is true. Indeed, Out There may well be crueler than the Subset Games-developed title.

Out There’s gameplay is entirely based around vulnerability and survival. Players are not able to rely on firepower to escape dangerous situations, and the bulk of the gameplay is instead focused around resource management. Keeping tabs on fuel, air, and hull stability is essential, with different elements repairing or refilling the Fuel, Oxygen, and Hull meters. These elements can be found by mining ore-rich planets to repair the hull, probing gas giants for hydrogen and helium for fuel, and landing on garden planets to refill oxygen supplies.

In a strange way, this means that the game almost plays out like the galaxy exploration mini-games of the Mass Effect series, particularly Mass Effect 2. As a result, if players found the planet-probing moments of Bioware’s series less-than-enthralling, then Out There might not be entertaining. The majority of the early gameplay is made up of three different proactive gameplay moments: sending probes for fuel, mining ore planets, and landing on garden planets. This worked incredibly well on mobile platforms, but home computer players may be left wanting more.

Thankfully, there is plenty to keep players occupied beyond the actual proactive gameplay itself. Out There plays almost as a minimalist adventure story, with text boxes revealing the inner thoughts of the astronaut and locations and events he discovers. Players will also be met with binary choices along the way, such as how to react to unknown creatures and objects in the void. The results can go two ways, rewarding players with additional material and items, or damaging the ship.

The additional items add even more tough choices for players to face. Each new module for the ship, such as shield generators to decease hull damage, takes up space in the cargo hold. Adding a new tool will mean there is less space for fuel, minerals, and oxygen. Players will have to make the decision about what elements must be dropped, and whether new modules are worth keeping over mineral supplies.

The player will also be given the chance to transfer over to new ships, abandoning the human-built craft for alien designs. These ships contain spacefaring tools of their own, as well as upgrades in cargo space – as long as the player is able to repair different parts of the alien vessel. Meanwhile, the player can also meet bizarre monoliths out in the void, granting players with new locations to discover and further developing the game’s story.

It’s not just alien craft that the player discovers, either, as Out There’s garden planets often contain life of their own. Mi-Clos has created a number of bizarre alien races for the player to make contact with. As the player meets and interacts with other races, they gain more and more alien vocabulary, and can slowly begin deciphering the unfamiliar language. Successful negotiations with sentient beings have their own rewards, with new items and the rare and vital Omega element, capable of fixing any of the three main ship components.

The brief meetings with alien races only intensify the feeling of isolation that Out There provides. Mi-Clos Studio’s title is incredibly successful in creating a sense of loneliness, meaning that every moment of contact with another race seems extremely important for the astronaut’s wellbeing. Out There nails down the idea of the cosmos being a dangerous and expansive void, which is lost all-too often in other spaced-based games. In terms of science fiction video games, this is 2001: A Space Odyssey to FTL’s original Star Trek.

The title has plenty of influence from science fiction of days gone by, particularly in terms of the graphical style. Out There has a pulp sci-fi feel, comparable to old-school sci-fi comics, and the vibrant color palette includes Hotline Miami-esque neon-soaked moments to create a varied and complex universe. It works well with the sparse writing, and marries brilliantly with the game’s ambient electronic soundtrack, created by Antichamber composer Siddhartha Barnhoorn. Out There’s music is gentle and unobtrusive, creating a deceptive calm.

It’s a calm that could be needed, however, as Out There does have the potential to frustrate. The cosmos can be cruel and unforgiving, and the random nature of the game’s universe means that a player’s skill will not always dictate success. Star systems will not always contain gas giants or garden planets, and an unlucky encounter on the way to another system could see severe damage done to the ship hull. If a playthrough is unsuccessful, however, it will not be long before players will want to start another, such is the desire to discover more of the game’s universe.

Out There has translated to home computers with ease, taking on the extra content required in its stride. The title avoids a number of science fiction tropes, and the bold move to avoid combat mechanics gives Out There its own place in space-based video games. Although the gameplay itself may prove tiresome over long periods, the game’s story elements, sense of isolation, and soundtrack make Out There a more-than-worthwhile purchase.

This game is frustrating as hell, and it will murder you hundreds of times without mercy.

It's also immersive and interesting to play. It doesn't hand you anything, so when you finally do attain some success you really feel the value of it. It manages to maintain a sense of quiet anxiety and an atmosphere of loneliness in the depths of space.

If you can handle some frustration and you're interested in seeing how far you can get before either madness or entropy claims you then check it out.