Anyone who knows me knows that I am a nerd, and nerds love video games. Typically, it's with my friends either playing Minecraft or Call of Duty, something where I can spend time online with them. However, there comes a time when a solo game is needed, preferably one with a good story. I had heard about Outer Wilds for some time throughout my doomscrolling sessions, and about 2 months ago, I caved and ended up buying it. And man, was it one of the best $15 I had ever spent. In all honesty, the game itself is quite unimpressive at face value: the graphics are minimal, the learning curve on gameplay is pretty much non-existent, and there's only a handful of planets to explore. The objective of the game is flying a scrappy wooden spaceship around a limited solar system, but the real gem comes within the story and its underlying meaning. Life lessons of impermanence, curiosity, and connection are lived out through these pixels, and it's beautiful to watch unfold.
I'll need to set some background to incorporate some philosophy before I start. The story of Outer Wilds begins with the Hearthians, our species. You play as one of them in the game, preparing for your first space launch. The beauty in it is that there is no grand mission, no destiny or path laid out for you. You're taught the basics, and that the universe is yours to explore. Honestly, it feels a little silly and uninteresting. So, you hop up into the ship, travel through and explore the confined cosmos. But, exactly twenty-two minutes after originally waking up, the sun goes supernova and explodes, engulfing everything in fire. Instead of dying, you wake up again at the beginning, the same as when you started, with your memories in-tact. Confusion sets in: you think there must be a bug. How can I be back to square one? Did I do something wrong? So, you ante up again, explore some more, yet it happens again! This is the flow of the game; You wake up, explore as much as you can for 22 minutes, the sun explodes, and you start over.
As you venture into the unknown universe, pieces of another species begin to get uncovered: the Nomai. They have been long gone for a while by the time our protagonist's story begins, but their presence lingers in every ruin, every fragment of technology, every set of words carved into stone. What makes the Nomai so intriguing is not only their advanced science and knowledge, but their mindset. They were explorers, philosophers, and seekers of knowledge who treated curiosity as a sacred duty. For the Nomai, existence wasn't about conquest or comfort; it was about the pursuit. The remnants of their projects and conversations you grow to discover suggest a people who believed meaning could not be found in certainty but rather in the act of asking and striving for something bigger than themselves.
Impermanence - The Beauty of Limitation. As you continue to play, you begin to understand that the Sun exploding is simply a way of life for our Hearthian protagonist. You realize that the game is structured to end, and you cannot control it. The loop does not let you fight inevitability but rather teaches you to adapt and live within it. And so here lies the genius of the game's layout: every move you make is a lesson in impermanence. Even the planets themselves are designed specifically with this ideology in mind; Brittle Hollow collapses into a black hole, Ember Twin both buries and reveals structures due to sand rising and falling on it, all within a single loop. Even the "home planet" of Timber Hearth has remnants of a comet that slammed into it, a reminder that endings have swept through even before your time.
I recently graduated college, and like many others have been going through a post-grad "funk" of sorts. I felt as if I didn't understand "what the point was" in essence. I think in today's day and age it's easy to get caught up in a ‘hustle culture' where many make a large point of maximizing your time to a point where spending your free time relaxing was a waste. In this life we spend so much time worrying about the endings: jobs, relationships, chapters of life, and ultimately the mortality of oneself, treating them as failures or injustices. Yet, the nature of the loop of the game shows that the impermanence itself is what makes everything matter. Watching the planets collapse time and time again, I began to introspect and view my own life differently. A friendship dying off, although painful, was not a loss, but proof that it had been real and was something worth grieving. A season of life passing, like college, was not catastrophe, but transition. The finite of things gives them their poignancy. The fire burns brighter because it will fade.
Curiosity - Wonder is THE Point. Once you accept the impermanent nature of the universe you find yourself in, a natural follow-up question would be something along the lines of: what should we do with the time we have? Luckily in our Outer Wilds, our only yet rewarding choice is to be curious. There's no grind, no level-up system, no combat to master. It's only you, your tin-can of a spaceship, and your curiosity which leads you forward. Every planet within the game is built like a mind puzzle that rewards the curious and courageous, and those willing to push further. The layout of the solar system ensures that your progress is measured not in possessions, but in knowledge and understanding.
Another powerful point built into the game's core mechanics. We've all dealt with the endless barrage of a child asking "why? why? why?", but at what point do we lose that innate curiosity? Luckily, in the game, it is essential. The only reason you learn anything is because you allow yourself to be interested, to wander, to try. It made me reflect on how often I neglect my own curiosity in favor of efficiency. How often do I walk or drive the same route without noticing anything new? How often do I suppress my questions because they seem impractical or irrelevant, or I'm afraid of the opinion of others in favor of not looking foolish? The game reminds you that having curiosity is not optional for a meaningful life, but rather it is the texture of meaning itself. The Nomai embodied this; They didn't pursue the Eye of the Universe because it promised power or safety, but because it was mysterious. Their writings you find along the way, are full of humor and wonder, evidence they enjoyed the pursuit itself. In following traces of their existence, you inherit their ethos: to seek, even without the guarantee of finding, is itself worthwhile.
Connection - The Glorious Endurance. As much as impermanence and curiosity shape the core experience, the emotional climax of the game drives home the final lesson: connection is what endures. After hours of exploring, failing, learning, and putting together the pieces of the truth, you disable the loop and fall into the Eye of the Universe. In the midst of quantum uncertainty, you gather your fellow travelers. One by one, they appear with their respective instruments, and together you sit around a campfire in the endless void. The universe collapses, but you are not alone. The simplicity of the scene, a circle of light in the vast darkness and a quiet companionship with the others, is better than any heroic finale I've experienced. And it hits even harder after going through the structure of the game. For so many loops, you were alone, fighting to survive, dying in silence, then doing it all over again. Now, at the end, you are together.
We spend so much of our lives chasing permanence through achievements or monuments, but the ending of our game suggests the way we share our limited time with others is above all else. The legacy we leave behind is not wealth, but warmth. Not statues, but stories. As Ernest Hemingway put it, "Every man has two deaths, one when he is buried in the ground and the last time someone mentions his name. In some ways men can be immortal". We live on in the memories of others, in the lessons we teach, the kindness in which we treat others. Each instrument is fragile, but together they can create something beautiful. In philosophy, this is called intersubjectivity, the recognition of who we are is co-authored by others around us. The final scene of the campfire is not out of comfort, it is constitutive. Without connection, we are not fully ourselves.
The Lingering Perspective. When I put the controller down after truly immersing myself in this game, I realized I had been practicing philosophy the whole time. Not through abstract ideologies, but lived through a simulation. I learned to accept that all things will end by watching the sun explode in my universe over and over. I had rediscovered the importance of curiosity by following my own wonder across the collapsing worlds. And at the end, the centrality of connection takes center stage as you accept the end of the universe, surrounded by your companions. Outer Wilds itself does not hand you a meaning, but rather trains you on how to make your own. And for me, that training bled into the real world: Endings stopped being catastrophic, curiosity became a purpose (again), and connection feels like less of a luxury and more of the whole point.
We do not get infinite loops. We don't have 22 minutes until the sun explodes. But in a sense, we live in the same rules under the hood: Our time is finite, the universe is vast. What we do matters not in permanence but in sparks. Impermanence is not a failure, it is the texture of beauty. Curiosity is not trivial, but how we make our own meaning. Connection is not optional, as it is what endures. And that is the Outer Wilds perspective; When our fire eventually goes out, the sparks we've shared will keep traveling. That is enough. That is everything.