Recent reviews by Ormbūnke

It's not often you come by games with such a great amount of character and polish such as this one.

Absolutely stellar levels of art direction, solid controls, fun and imaginative weapons and a powerup synergy mechanism that is more concerned with hilarity rather than it being something along the line of "balanced for E-sports".

It's honestly surprising that a twin stick shooter that hasn't had an update in a long time has kept me and my wife entertained for the amount of time this one has.

I'll try to not spoil anything, as it is hard enough to try and read up about the game without killing the experience. Hopefully this review will serve as some kind of guide for someone deliberating whether to get this game after finishing the base game.

So, here are my thoughts:

Having played the base game, and seeing people online saying this fills in some holes in the story laid out in the base game I felt intrigued enough to pick it up, I mean, we all want to know more about what happened right?

Having also read that there are some horror-like elements and the explicit warning and option to "reduce frights" when starting the game, me and my partner spent the first hours of playing being super nervous and scared, only to realize the anticipation was not worth our nerves.

The horror elements are just janky and tedious and honestly don't really fit in (what I think) story wise and for that matter vibe wise into the outer wilds experience you may have fallen in love with with the base game. This expansion trades the "existential dread" to outright fright which at least in my book isn't a welcome change.

Its core loop is different to the base game, you don't have as much ability to follow up different leads, and the "breadcrumbing" is worse, leading to you actually exploring less, and feeling more stuck instead.

I think the biggest let down is that in the base game, every new loop felt like a new opportunity to explore a different lead, while the DLC made every new loop feel like tedium. Instead of zooming around in your ship or jetpacking around, you're forced to travel by walking and janky rafts. I get the point of taking away control from the player to change things up and increase the perceived danger level, but it also takes away enough from the gameplay experience to make it feel insuffucient rather than fresh.

A bit of a letdown, but still engaging enough to play through to satiate some of the "lack-of-closure" feelings from the base game, although its debatable how much closure you really get here, as it's a kind of "Lost tv-series" kind of world building where we're just adding in a completely new element to serve as an explanation for some previously unexplained thing, only to leave the audience in a subsequent state of still missing out on the exact same amount of knowledge. It feels cheap and uninspired. For that matter, the lack of communication with the until now never before met civilization also means that we're less likely to attach which further hurts the enjoyment. The connection with the nomai and the search for Solanum in the base game was a driving force in that story, here we get basically nothing.

I'm a bit dissapointed

I have been playing this with my wife for quite some time and it is genuinely a blast to play together. The first runs of trying to get further and further are truly blissful. Progressing higher up in difficulty level at the lighthouse and then dropping down to the standard difficulty really shows how much better we had become at the game, but ultimately also shows this game's greatest weakness.

Although the lighthouse update added crucially needed replay value and progression goals, latest update (adding new ships) really wasn't enough for us to get brought back in. Realizing that the gameplay loop really isn't anything more than the three zone bosses plus the last boss and the game abrubtly ending after that is really a bummer.

Perhaps this game just lacks the depth of some roguelites, i.e. not having that kind of 100h plus replayability time, which honestly is totally OK.

The studio has executed on its vision and delivered on their goals. Solid art style and compelling gameplay makes this a good pick up to play with a friend or SO, don't expect the game to last forever though.