The RPG-survival sandbox Outward looks promising, and more than a little daunting: Magic, for instance, is a lot more complicated that simply chugging mana potions and blasting superheated magma from your fingertips. "It's a lot of work to cast spells," Chris wrote in his recent preview, although that's a big part of what makes it enjoyable, too. 

"In Outward, spellcasting is a process, one of preparation and crafting and ritual," he explained. "It makes spells feel weighty, makes you deliberate before using them, and having used them, feels like an accomplishment (or a waste, sometimes, if you use them on creatures that perhaps didn't justify it)." 

That complexity of spellcasting is emphasized in a new video focusing on combat, in which developer Nine Dots Studio says that it wanted to take "a more ritualistic approach" to magic in Outward. Step one is learning a spell, in this case Spark, which as Chris said is "weak" and "wimpy," handy for starting a fire but not much else. But if you use alchemy to convert a mana stone to a firestone, and if you've learned how to use the firestone to create a fire sigil, and you cast Spark while you're standing in the sigil, now you're cooking with Fireballs. 

"This may sound impractical in a combat situation, but you can make firestones or buy them from an alchemist in preparation for what's ahead," the narrator says. "You could even cast the sigil in anticipation of a sight and lure your enemies to your spot, then dodge in and out of your sigil to quickly throw multiple fireballs for as long as your sigil is active." 

It reminds me a bit of The Witcher or Arx Fatalis, which also put a premium on pre-fight planning: It feels like a hassle at times but it can also be very rewarding when that up-front strategizing pays off. Hopefully Outward will be able to strike that balance between effort and payoff, too. 

Combat won't be quite so ritualized, but it will require more than just hitting enemies over the head until they fall down. Warriors will have their own special abilities to draw from, like poisons and traps, and battles must be approached tactically to ensure that you don't get pounded into paste while you're fighting the good fight. (Remember, you're not the Nerevarine in this one, you're just a guy—a tough guy with potential, yes, but still very much on your first day of Heroes 101 class.) 

Outward is set to come out on March 26. Find out more on Steam or at ninedotsstudio.com. 

I'm 12 hours into fantasy RPG Outward when I travel to its second region, visit the city of Berg for the first time, and buy my first proper backpack. Strange to say that buying a backpack feels momentous, but dammit, it really is. I feel triumphant to discard my primitive satchel and shoulder a real pack on my back. Not only does it fit more loot, but I can hang a lantern from it too, so I can have both hands free and still see in the dark. That's the kind of game Outward is, one where the things you take for granted in other games feel like a real accomplishment.

I've also been humbled repeatedly in those 12 hours. I've been battered unconscious by large birds and angry deer, gouged by hidden spike traps, and pummeled senseless by scruffy bandits. One time I even ran into the wrong castle and was imprisoned in a mining colony beneath it, from which I only escaped by first convincing the guards to let me work in the kitchen, stealing back my precious backpack from the fort's storage room, then leaping into a pit and washing up later on a beach, freezing, confused, wracked with pain, and dying of thirst. I had to build a fire for warmth, chow down on some dried mushrooms, tear my hood into linen scraps to use as bandages, and brew a potion with my alchemy kit to regain my senses. Outward is a fantasy game with monsters and wizards, but it's also a completely engrossing survival experience.

I tend to enjoy the beginning of RPGs more than the endings. I love to start Oblivion or Skyrim over with a new character, penniless and talentless, relishing the early hours of play when every rusty dagger and basic leather boot is a treasure. I find the hardscrabble life more satisfying than hours later when I'm dumping complete sets of armor out of my inventory because I simply don't need them and can't even be bothered to sell them, that's how damn rich and powerful I've become. I also love games like Stalker and DayZ where no matter how many hours I put in, and no matter how much great gear I collect, I'm essentially no stronger or sturdier than the average person. I remain fragile and mortal, where the slightest misstep can leave me inches from death. It makes every encounter a tense and memorable one.

I find those same feelings pervade in Outward. You play as an ordinary, common person who can contract a cold and suffer from indigestion and can easily lose a fight to a large crab. I get genuinely excited at every piece of new gear I find or buy, even knowing they won't turn me into a superhero. And this feeling of being a common mortal is especially interesting here, because you don't actually die in Outward.

Similar to games like Mount & Blade, losing all your health in a fight results in you falling unconscious to the ground. You'll wake up again, bruised, battered, often hungry and thirsty and suffering other negative effects. Sometimes you'll be thrown in a bandit's camp or fort and have to find your gear and make an escape. Other times a mysterious, unseen benefactor will have dragged you to safety and you'll awaken next to a burning campfire with a helpful potion and a friendly note. Sometimes you'll be unceremoniously dumped outside the dungeon you were defeated in, other times you'll wake up in in the safety of the nearest big city so you can put yourself back together.

This sounds like an extremely forgiving system—and some might say it's not a true survival game if you can't actually die—but at times it can feel pretty punishing. Typically, upon losing a fight in a game, I want to reload my last save and plunge back in. Outward auto-saves for you constantly, meaning there is no going back. Make a choice and you're stuck with it. Lose a battle, and you'll have to pick yourself up and find your way back to it to try again. After a defeat I've woken up clear on the other side of the map, so it can take ages to pick up where you left off (and there's no fast-travel, either). I failed a timed quest because some monsters beat me up and I woke up too far away to return to the quest giver in time, which was a considerable setback. The lesson is clear. Don't start fights unless you need to. Flee when you have to. Make choices carefully. Always be prepared. Losing isn't fatal, but it can certainly be a headache.

I also acquired my first magic spells in those dozen hours, after a considerably tricky journey to the center of a mountain to meet some wizards. And even using spells is a bit of a survival challenge. To begin with, you need to permanently trade some of your maximum health and stamina to even acquire the mana needed to cast spells, making yourself physically weaker in order to become more spiritually powerful. 

And as for the spells I learned, one is called Spark. It's weak. It's wimpy. It does a bit of damage, and burns enemies a little over time, but it's like flicking a lit match at someone and hoping it overwhelms them. To really put it to use, I need physical components. I can mine Mana stones from glowing mineral deposits with a pickaxe, and then use an alchemy kit (purchased) over a campfire (crafted) to mix oil (found or purchased) with those magic rocks to create fire stones. With those fire stones in my inventory, I can cast a flaming sigil on the ground, and as long as I'm within that burning magic circle, my wimpy Spark spell will now burst with power.

It's a lot of work to cast spells, in other words, and that work makes it enjoyable. In Outward, spellcasting is a process, one of preparation and crafting and ritual. It makes spells feel weighty, makes you deliberate before using them, and having used them, feels like an accomplishment (or a waste, sometimes, if you use them on creatures that perhaps didn't justify it). And all this for a simple fireball spell, which most RPGs give you as a matter of course so you're not out in the wild with empty hands.

That design follows through with just about everything you do in Outward. You need to keep yourself fed and hydrated and sleep regularly or begin to suffer negative effects on your stamina and health. You can lay down a simple bedroll at night, but you won't rest as well as you do in a tent or a bed, and you may be ambushed in the wild unless you devote some hours to standing guard—meaning less replenishment from sleep. You can get too warm and too cold, depending on the weather and circumstances, meaning you'll want fur clothing for cold climates and desert gear in arid ones.

Want to visit another region? Prepare travel rations by cooking meat and salt in a pot, carry any number of restorative potions, bring anything else you think you might need because it's a long, slow trip back if you forget something. And all of that gear weighs you down, right down to how much water is in your waterskins and how much money you have on you. Sure, it's great to have a few hundred pieces of silver to spend in the next city, but the more silver you carry, the less you can carry of everything else.

I haven't even talked about the story! There is one, and I'm enjoying it, though I'm not far into it yet. There are lots of NPCs, a main quest, side quests, plus dungeons, forts, and caves to explore. I haven't talked about weapon skills: you can learn them by helping NPCs with quests or purchasing them from experts (I can throw my lit lantern at someone for a makeshift fireball if I'm desperate and can't cast my Spark spell). You can increase your health and stamina and mana, usually by visiting trainers and plying them with silver. There's dozens of recipes for cooking and alchemy and the crafting of weapons and armor. There's a lot going on in Outward. There's even local and online co-op, which I have yet to try.

For now I'm mainly taking pleasure in the survival elements, the preparation that I perform before stepping outside the safety of city walls, my lovely backpack filled with potions I've brewed and food I've cooked and weapons I've crafted and repaired, and maybe some silver to spend in the next city. If I make it there in one piece.

Outward, developed by Nine Dots and published by Deep Silver, is due to arrive March 26.

"It is difficult to come by a more potent equivalent of adventuring in real life than going on a trip with nothing but a backpack and pocket change." These words begin the latest dev diary for open world RPG Outward, from Nine Dots Studio and Deep Silver. It's not just the romantic idea of a backpack signifying travel and adventure, either: in Outward, your backpack has an effect on your character beyond just how much loot you can carry. Check out the dev diary above.

Using a large backpack in Outward will obviously allow you to carry important supplies, but it's cumbersome, slowing you down and making it much more difficult to dodge enemy attacks. A smaller pack will mean you'll be much more nimble, but you'll have to find food and water during your journey instead of carrying it with you. It might even make sense, as shown in the video above, to take off your backpack before going into battle to allow you a wider range of movement. Just don't forget where you parked it.

The diary also gives us a look at the four different regions in Outward, and while you've got a map to help you find your way around, there's no marker showing your position on the map and no arrow pointing you to your objective. You'll need to navigate by spotting landmarks and keeping track of where you are in the world. This isn't a game that's going to lead you around by the nose.

As we learned in the last dev diary, Outward has survival elements (you can even see a player contract a cold and a cough in the video at the top) and a ritual-based spellcasting system that requires much more than a quick glance at a scroll to start flinging fireballs around. It has a constant auto-save as well, meaning you'll have to live (or die) with the choices you make.

Outward arrives on March 26. Here it is on Steam.

Outward is a sandbox RPG that has a bunch of fascinating systems, from its novel, hands-on magic to the consequences of defeat, though they’re sadly not shown off in this strangely meandering trailer, which you can watch above. It’s also got a release date now, and you’ll be able play in March. 

The trailer is mostly concerned with reiterating the fact that you’re not a special Chosen One with incredible powers, you’re just a regular person, though one who can become pretty handy with a sword or casting spells. So not that regular. It’s a tough, dangerous world, where you’ve to survive by eating, maintaining a healthy body temperature and trying not to get stabbed. 

So it’s hard and there are survival mechanics, but that’s par for the course. The interesting stuff is in the details. Magic, for instance, isn’t as simple as casting spells whenever you want. It’s ritual-based, so you need to prepare items and a magic circle before you start burning enemies to a crisp with a fireball. You need to put in the effort, not just wave your hands and mutter some gibberish. 

The dynamic death scenarios might be its most unusual feature. When you’re defeated in combat, you might not be killed. Instead, you could be captured and forced to work for some bandits, so you’ll need to find a way to stage a breakout. The consequences range in how elaborate they are, so you might simply be lucky enough for a god to intervene, bringing you back from the brink. 

While I was a bit dismissive of the survival stuff above, I actually like the sound of it. Food isn’t just food, for example. So if you scoff down some meat from a big predator before a battle, you’ll be all fired up and ready to tear your enemies apart. That’s great for a warrior, but if you’re more into magic, you’ll be looking for different ways to prepare.

I don’t typically like faffing around with inventories that much—we don’t have enough time on this marble to spend it rummaging around in digital sacks—but Outward’s inventory system is tied to things like the role you’ve picked for yourself and has a direct impact on combat and exploration. See, you can only carry ten items on your belt, so to carry more, you need to invest in a backpack. If your dream is to fill a swimming pool with gold, you might get a huge backpack to contain all the stuff you’ll be buying and selling, but that will make you slow and get in the way of combat.

There’s multiplayer, too, letting two players work together (or at least share the world) in local splitscreen or online. So if you need someone to carry your bags and hold the torch when you’re exploring dark caves, or if you just need some bait, rope a friend into helping. 

Outward is due out on March 26, 2019.