
The Stranger is its own small ecosystem that wraps around itself and subscribes to the same time-based changes that all the other planets in Outer Wilds follow. It’s a craft from another universe entirely, drawn to your home by the same intrigue surrounding the Eye of the Universe, which drives all the stories throughout Outer Wilds. The expansion takes place on The Stranger– mysterious ship that has supposedly always been orbiting the solar system in plain sight. At the same time, not having played the original adventure will make Echoes of the Eye more challenging, given how it depends on a way of thinking that is only gained through cutting your teeth on the puzzles of the main game. This expansion is meant to sit parallel to the challenges of the main game, which means you won’t have to be familiar with its mechanics regarding quantum physics or superposition. Even starting the expansion is a delightful puzzle, giving you a thin breadcrumb trail to follow that exposes a secret so deviously hidden that it’s easy to believe it was always there to begin with. But it’s also not without some new stumbles that introduce infrequent but inescapable frustration to the game’s core time loop.Įchoes of the Eye doesn’t require any prior knowledge of the format of Outer Wilds to start or complete, but it’s certainly tuned for players who have accustomed themselves to the type of thinking its puzzles require. Instead of taking place throughout a solar system, Echoes of the Eye hones in on a singular location, which itself is broken up into distinct areas of interest that keep the intrigue and sense of discovery alive and well. Outer Wilds was an expansive, planet-trotting puzzle adventure, but its first and only expansion, Echoes of the Eye, is a more condensed and focused encapsulation of all the elements that made it great. You can find additional information about Polygon’s ethics policy here. These do not influence editorial content, though Vox Media may earn commissions for products purchased via affiliate links.
Outer wilds echoes of the eye code#
The game was reviewed on PC using a pre-release download code provided by Mobius Digital.
Outer wilds echoes of the eye windows#
28 on PlayStation 4, Windows PC, and Xbox One.

Outer Wilds: Echoes of the Eye was released Sept. If you want to argue with me, I suppose you’ll have to try it for yourself. And if you take the two games together, as one single video game, then Outer Wilds deserves its space near the top of any list enumerating the greatest games of all time. Outer Wilds: Echoes of the Eye is a masterpiece living within another masterpiece. To keep my promise, I’ll leave it at that. Even after five hours, having seen what I believed was the entirety of what there is to see, I sat down at a fire pit, took a breather, and discovered I had overlooked yet another separate world, within the world, within the world of Outer Wilds.ĭoes it sound like I’m on MDMA? I hope so - that’s how I felt playing Echoes of the Eye. Despite Echoes of the Eye being inside the same universe as Outer Wilds, reaching its “space” within outer space is more abstract than simply pointing your spaceship in the right direction.Īnd once you do get inside Echoes of the Eye, these twists keep coming, like the game is a busted gumball machine and it can’t stop dispensing treat after treat. What if you never spotted that note? Or bothered to visit the radio station? Like I said up top, you’d straight-up miss the game. How I learned to love Outer Wilds’ time loop That radio station, a few photographs, and a number will get you where you’re going. There’s a new note in the museum on the planet where Outer Wilds begins. Here’s the closest I’ll come to spoiling Echoes of the Eye, though really I’m just providing a map to reaching it. When I say “find the game,” I mean that literally. The only reason Echoes of the Eye isn’t a true sequel, as far as I can tell, is because you can’t experience its many wonders without finding the game within the original’s universe.

And the game can be played without uncovering a single secret in the original Outer Wilds. The creators tell a new story, arguably darker and more mysterious than the first. It’s nearly as long as its predecessor, plopping the player in a similarly massive and disorienting setting.

But by practically every measure, Echoes of the Eye is a sequel. Outer Wilds: Echoes of the Eye has been marketed as a downloadable expansion to the original game, Polygon’s 2019 Game of the Year. If you want to see the very best of the best for your platform(s) of choice, check out Polygon Essentials. When we award a game the Polygon Recommends badge, it’s because we believe the title is uniquely thought-provoking, entertaining, inventive, or fun - and worth fitting into your schedule. Polygon Recommends is our way of endorsing our favorite games.
