Out There: Oceans of Time Preview

The first Out There game was released in 2014 for mobile devices, but with multiple enhanced versions, developer Mi-Clos Studio has spent some time fully realising their vision for the game. It seems that they are finally happy with how it turned out, as 2022 will see a full sequel to the roguelike space RPG.

The game puts you in deep space with the simple aim of surviving. I say “simple”; the reality is anything but. You have a relatively small ship with only so much cargo space, and you have to make your way through the universe without running out of fuel or oxygen, or perishing in the depths of space because of a hull breach. Along the way, you will find many planets you can land on and explore by sending an away team down to the surface to look for goodies and resources, or even new crew members in some cases. 

There’s a huge amount of depth to the game, with literally thousands of planets to explore, but they all fall into three main categories: rocky planets which are high in minerals, gaseous planets which are usually a good source of fuel, and bio planets with breathable atmospheres that usually provide a source of oxygen. Your journey will be slowed by the constant need to stop off and collect resources from planets along the way, and I did find that at times the procedurally-generated nature of the planets meant that death felt inevitable, and that was a bit of a shame. The final version of the game will have a story mode where planets aren’t quite so random, and I would hope that some balancing will take place to avoid putting you in a situation where survival depends on luck. 

Unlike most roguelikes, this is a game with a rich story. You are the captain of a ship that was transporting a dangerous beastie. As is so often the case in videogames, the beast escaped and you were forced to abandon ship, exiting cryogenically frozen in escape pods. 100 years later you awaken to realise that the monster has no doubt wrought carnage on the universe. You need to find any of your surviving crew members and your ship and find out what happened, but that’s no mean feat when you only start with your escape pod and basic resources. 

Out There: Oceans of Time plays relatively similar to games like Starflight or Star Control II if you remove the combat from them. The expeditions are a nice touch, giving a more up close and personal look at the surfaces of planets. Along the way you also meet a number of alien races and there are apparently options for things like diplomacy, although in my playthroughs I never encountered anything like that. I did come across a number of random events where I had text-based choices like whether to save a distressed ship etc. There are more RPG-like elements shown in trailers and screenshots and I expect that if I had taken different paths I would have come across these. Certainly the game promises these when it’s fully released in 2022. 

There are a number of options that aren’t currently enabled, like crew management and ship modifications. There are also a number of unexplained stats that will hopefully be detailed in a better tutorial once the game is finished. Even in its current unfinished state, I still sank a good 20 or so hours into this, and sadly even after that I still felt I hadn’t seen everything before the demo expired at the end of the Steam Next Fest. It’s safe to say that I saw a massive amount of promise in this title and I’m stoked to see it develop. In the meantime, I’m planning to catch up on the previous title as I feel like this series could be something of an undiscovered gem for me.