![]() There comes a ton of variety along the way in terms of what you’ll encounter as well. When you’re in that position of no more options, you take the last risk of making a leap of faith with your hyper drive, and hope you might find a bounty of the precious resources at your destination, if you can survive at all. Often I’d find myself on the last few bits of fuel, but with no place to be able to successfully jump to within range. ![]() You’ll always struggle to maintain enough of the primary resources to keep your ship trudging through the universe, much in the same way the crew in Firefly just needed to keep their ship flying. In fact, along with the narrative feeling bleak, the whole progression feels the same way. This game is tough, but it never feels frustrating in a bad way. You’ll find yourself generally talking about yourself in the first person, as one likely would tend to do alone in space. The writing here is quite good and certainly engaging, and I felt that it also did a fulfilling job of narrating your own personal solitude and emphasizing your bleak situation. For example, stumbling upon a derelict ship, and choosing to explore it, instead of leaving it be, which ultimately nets you some resources, but in the meantime something negative has happened and now you’ve lost a percent of your oxygen storage. In many of these cases, it’ll be a risk vs reward condition as well. While traveling between star systems, you’ll oftentimes be confronted with a narrative dialog box, which also coincides with something happening that’ll force you to make a decision. The Choose-Your-Own-Adventure narrative gameplay is the other primary interaction point. Items range from better hyperdrives for longer jump distances to scanning equipment that lets you know what planets are comprised of within a start cluster. In addition to the main ship segments, you’ll also find rarer elements that can be used to craft new equipment as you discover it. There’s an immense amount of RNG (Random Number Generator) mechanics at work in this game, so you’ll oftentimes feel as though luck is either with you, or quite against you. With a roguelike feel, if you perish you’ll start over again, with a randomized universe to traverse. Should any of these deplete entirely during your travels you’ll be in trouble and more often than not, as I found…done for. These are managed by probing planets for the resources needed to replenish these areas of your ship, and can also be acquired through other avenues. Managing your ship is all about maintaining three primarily segments: your fuel, oxygen, and hull. ![]() ![]() Gameplay is split into these two main areas, but overlap continuously. Playing Out There Ω The Alliance is all about managing your ship’s resources, while tempting fate with every encounter that confronts you. However, the journey is far from simple, and perils are at every corner. With a freak anomaly, you find yourself alone somewhere in the universe inside your spaceship with beacons lightyears away helping to guide you back home. Will Out There find its place in the galaxy as a solid game, or drift off into the darkness, never to be remembered? Out There: Ω The Alliance for the Nintendo Switch is a choose your own adventure styled game blended with survival resource management that precisely places you in this scenario of being lost “out there” in space with the odds of living not in your favor. It’s also one of the reasons I loved watching Star Trek Voyager, because it forced people to truly tackle the complete unknown in search of a way home. I’ve always had nightmares that some day I’d be able to travel into space, but a mishap would occur throwing me into the far reaches of the universe with no clear path back.
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