Outer Wilds took exactly 22-minutes to change my views on life.

If you have not played Outer Wilds, DO NOT READ THIS. SPOILERS AHEAD

I am not easily scared. I’ve never feared spiders, snakes, heights, or anything else really. But I have always been deeply terrified of death. I don’t know what happens when we die, and the idea of my existence being snuffed out in an instance is suffocating.  Lockdown only amplified this fear, daily death tolls continuing to rise, and being stuck inside did nothing to curb my anxieties.

I found solace and comfort in video games. I grew up obsessed with games. I would spend every opportunity I got at my computer, or at a friend’s house playing their PlayStation or Xbox. Throughout 2020 family games like Among Us brought a sense of togetherness that was otherwise missing. Losing myself in a narrative game like God of War or The Last of Us acted as a form of escapism from the outside world. Although the latter was a little close to home given its focus on a world ravaged by a fungal pandemic.

Death isn’t the end in video games. In fact, so many games incentivise death to learn and improve. Maybe it acted as a way for me to escape my fear. Outer Wilds is more complicated than that. It’s a working solar system expertly crafted within a game. It mimics real world physics, and it acts as a vessel to explain the complicated realms of quantum physics. Planets orbit the enormous central sun; gravity fluctuates as planets enter each other’s proximity, and black holes mercilessly drag me into the abyss if I dare to venture too close. My favourite example was the Ash Twins. A pair of planets – one covered in sand and the other a hollow shell. As time progresses the gravity of the second planet draws the sand from the other like an hourglass, revealing a civilisation buried deep beneath the planets crust.

The sun at the centre of the system is reaching the end of its life. From the game’s opening, there is exactly 22-minutes before it goes supernova and obliterates all life within the galaxy in an impressive display of neon blue and blinding white light.

I control a Hearthian. They are small in stature, with a murky green skin tone, six beady eyes, hands with four stubby fingers, and pointed ears. Although their civilisation is underdeveloped, they have managed to cobble together a form of rudimentary space travel allowing for unfettered exploration to the sound of loose bolts and clattering metal panels.

When exploration is cut short by the inevitable supernova, I find myself back at the start. In the same bed, on the same planet, as if nothing happened. Restarting the same 22-minute time loop. Subsequent excursions became an effort to prevent the annihilation of the galaxy. To prevent death. To do this I would have to find The Eye of the Universe, although there was no indication to what this was or what it looked like, only that it was the solution to my impending doom. Through exploration I began to understand the inner mechanisms of the system. How the sun changes colour and expands as time moved forward, enveloping planets within its shallower orbit. How certain materials behave differently when observed or when out of sight. How being sucked into a black hole would spit me out on the other side of the system, unharmed.

Building an exhaustive catalogue of physical anomalies and creating my own experiments to test theories eventually bore fruit. I found the eye of the universe, and thus a way to cheat death.

Except it wasn’t that simple. Finding the eye did nothing to stop the suffocating presence of the collapsing star. Instead, it took me to a campsite. A smouldering flame surrounded by small benches. Sitting at these benches were the characters I met on my journey. Other astronauts, alien species, and helpful creatures that guided me.

And as the game draws to a close, rather than cheating death, I found myself embracing it, looking back on what I discovered in this beautiful, awe inspiring and technically marvellous rendition of a working solar system. Not fearing the end, instead appreciating that I got to experience life in the first place and that I got to see all the beauty it had to offer.