A short list of games that were incredibly successful in certain aspects, but which Outer Wilds makes look almost amateuristic in these same aspects: Super Mario Galaxy, Mass Effect, The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask, Breath of the Wild, Metroid Prime.

Because this is one of those games in which everything is a spoiler and spoilers are especially bad because the whole point of playing is learning and discovering things by yourself, I can't tell you exactly why I say this or which aspects I'm talking about — but I swear it is not hyperbole.

This game is awesome in the true sense of the word: something that causes "awe". It will probably make you look at the world, the universe, and your own life in a different way, at least for a while. In less than two in-game hours, it went from "huh, I heard nice things about it" to "this is one of the Top 3 games I ever played in the 20+ years I've been gaming".

EDIT: Nominated to Game of the Year on the 2020 Steam Awards.

This game is Pac-Man as a platformer, and I mean this in the grandest of all possible senses.

N++'s timelessness is unmatched by any other game in its genre. If you think Celeste is "precise", Super Meat Boy is "hard", Super Mario is "expressive", you're not wrong — but, still, N++ distills all of these qualities in the purest, most refined experience of jumping and moving in a 2D space.

Unbound by any concern whatsoever with things like narrative, worldbuilding, or thematic cohesion, N++ is just lines. Each of its *checks wikipedia* four thousand three hundred and forty stages (!!) is made up of a few perfectly straight lines, a mere dozen or so types of enemies and traps, and a number of square "coins" you may pick up as you traverse the level if you have the gall to go for any score higher than "I was able to clear this level somehow".

The only two things that prop up this ridiculous game are pure, unadulterated level design intelligence, and a physics engine that would make Einstein himself soil his trousers. Every single input you give to this game works double or triple duty. You know how in Super Smash Bros you can control the height of your jump depending on how long you press the button, and you can also do a "short hop" by lightly tapping it with a level of subtlety that's frankly unbecoming of the fighting genre? That is good gameplay. Now, imagine that, but better. Bonkers better. Infinite levels of either floatiness or short-hoppy-ness at the tip of your finger, dictated only by your eagerness and/or patience to let go of the A button.

If the Ninja you control in N++ could leave traces of paint in the screen, we would most certainly have N++ artists, such is the expressiveness and gracefulness of this character, in these levels, with these physics, in this game.

(I'll have more to say, but I'll publish this now because I have other pressing matters. It will suffice as a review for now.)

* Played multiplied dozens of hours on the Nintendo Switch.