This is a very short and simple, yet engaging game. The vast majority of the gameplay is typing and looking around, but the settings and atmospheres make it quite immersive. There are some really cool moments as a result.
There aren't many jumpscares and most of them occur in the first episode. So if they really bother you, just turn your sound down when playing that one.
Each of the episodes has something different to offer and the story is intriguing through the first three episodes, but personally I wasn't a huge fan of the "big reveal" of the fourth. (That brought my rating score down by half a star.)
Still definitely worth playing through it all, though.

Incredibly fun and addicting space dwarf action. Props to the devs not only for making such a great game, but also for keeping the paid content to a minimum with only the cosmetic bundles on the Steam store page. Aside from those, all other cosmetic items and upgrades must be earned by actually playing, which is a huge breath of fresh air in today's landscape.

Update: 200 hours later, I can confidently say this is one of the best live service-style games on the market. The ONLY thing that could possibly make it better in its current state is if it were free-to-play, but it's more than worth its affordable price. With the newly released Season 1 "Rival Incursion," the amount of content is higher than it has ever been, and the battle pass is not only free, but also does not rely on FOMO tactics. Yes, everything in the pass will continue to be available after the season ends. What game does that better? I'll wait for an answer. The core gameplay loop itself is also just fun as hell. I'm greatly enjoying playing on higher difficulties with random teammates online. It's one of the very few multiplayer games where having a bad experience with randoms is the exception, not the rule.

I hate to be in the minority of people on this planet who don't absolutely fawn over this game, but it's just not for me. I'm not big on management sims, and the subgenre of "video games that have a lot of minigames packed into them" never interested me. I was really enjoying it for the first 10 or so hours, but it fell off hard for me after that. I wasn't able to finish the main story before becoming bored.

With all that said, this game certainly has a lot of heart and soul, especially in the character design and animations. And I can see why lots of people really like it. So you should probably just ignore me in this sea of thumbs-up reviews. I'm the one out of ten dentists who doesn't recommend your favorite toothpaste.

(I don't usually rate games that I abandon, but considering I put over 20 hours into it and got pretty close to the end, I felt that this was justified.)

If you're even remotely interested in playing this game, STOP READING anything about it online and just play it - I can practically guarantee you will love it. In my opinion, this deserves a spot on the list of greatest games ever made. I consider it my favorite of all time.

Simply put, this is a "mystery solving" sort of puzzle game where all the clues are brilliantly hidden throughout, and the devs have done a remarkable job of making it manageable for you to solve, thanks to how the story is presented and an in-game log system that keeps track of the important things for you. It's an incredibly rewarding experience each time you make progress to a place/thing you previously didn't know how to access, and the overall journey is unlike any other game I've played. The ending is very touching and while I know some people are going to find it unsatisfying, it really does align with the themes that the game has been delivering during its entire duration - it makes perfect sense.

Besides, as they say, "the journey is more important...blah blah blah." But that trope really is extremely appropriate to apply here. Your first playthrough of this game is your only real playthrough. Cherish it! Like many others have said before me, I am quite sad that I will never be able to experience the journey again. I can only hope that there are more games of this style in the future, and that they come close to the level of quality of Outer Wilds.

Sam Barlow does it again. And by that I mean he presents a very unique, memorable experience that has many excellent aspects to it but is frustratingly held back by a few utterly horrible aspects.

The cardinal sin of this game is that the gameplay starts and ends with you randomly clicking on items and characters in hopes that you get a new scene, along with scrubbing some clips in reverse, forward, reverse again. For the first several hours, it's actually really easy to get new scenes, and this isn't a big deal. But after a certain point, it gets MUCH harder. You have to start going back through footage you've already seen a dozen times and blindly clicking every object you didn't think to click earlier. I can actually forgive the bizarre UI because it does add something of a nice touch to the immersion, but the core "gameplay" becomes severely frustrating the longer you stick with it. Immortality is really all about its story-beneath-the-story, so I would love it if the game actually let me see the damn thing without forcing me to throw ♥♥♥♥ at the wall and hope it sticks.

And yet, for those first several hours...I was really enjoying this! I firmly believe this is Sam Barlow's best game overall. The acting and cinematography are great. The secret clips make the game way more creepy and intriguing as soon as you hit your first one. The game had me sticking to my screen for hours, clicking and scrubbing like a madman just to keep finding more clips! Honestly I'll keep buying and playing Barlow's games because they're always challenging in several ways (some good, some bad). But the important thing is that no one else is making games like these, and that's great for games as art.

My recommended method of playing this interactive movie is to find as many clips as you can, find as many secret clips as you can (the game helps you find at least a few of them quite well), see the ending (which is possible only if you find enough secrets), and then go on YouTube to watch all the other secret clips you missed. That way, you get the meat and potatoes of the experience and also minimize the frustration that comes with the endgame.

(This would have been 3.5 stars were it not for the awful repetition in the last few hours.)

Played this on PC with a PS4 controller, which is obviously not what the devs intended but I think even if I had a Steam Deck, it wouldn't have improved the experience all that much.

Honestly I didn't really enjoy this game. Like, at all. It literally is just a tech demo for the Steam Deck, and I was expecting a bit more of an actual game to go with it. Turns out it's just a glorified turret shooter that has about 20% gameplay and 80% cutscenes. Also, the comedic writing and voice acting isn't up to par for this franchise, although JK Simmons still kills it as Cave Johnson 11 years after Portal 2's release.

The ONLY reasons I recommend it are because it gives some new lore for the Portal story, it's free, and it's very short.

Like the base game, if you are even somewhat intrigued by Outer Wilds and/or its DLC, STOP READING and just buy it. I can almost guarantee you will love it. I would also recommend playing through the entire base game before purchasing/installing Echoes of the Eye. This DLC is clearly intended to be played near the end of your time with the base game, after you have learned about all the major plot points and uncovered nearly all of the mysteries. If you install the DLC, there is a chance you might accidentally stumble upon it before the devs intended.

Echoes of the Eye introduces a singular new major area in the solar system to explore, and it's genuinely mind blowing how cleverly designed the entire thing is. You could say the same about the base game, but consider the fact that the DLC took me about 12 hours to complete (compared to the base game's 22 hours) - that speaks volumes about the level of challenge and the content that is packed in here. The story is a wonderful expansion on the lore and progresses amazingly, capped off with an ending that is sure to tug at your heartstrings. As is the case with the ending of the base game, the ending of the DLC doesn't have a traditionally satisfying conclusion, but if you really give it some thought and time to ponder over, I think you'll find that it couldn't have been more fitting of a conclusion.

Now, I would be remiss to avoid addressing the 2 major elephants in the room about Echoes of the Eye. The game explicitly warns you about scary moments and gives you the option to tone them down if you wish. There is absolutely no shame in doing this. The scariness certainly enhanced the experience for me, but I also experimented with the "fewer frights" setting enabled and it really won't make that much of a difference to your overall enjoyment of the DLC.

The second elephant is a certain shift in gameplay that comes alongside these scarier moments. I know they frustrated me after a while, as they did with many players out there. I would simply suggest to you to think outside the box. I was shocked when I discovered from online guides the easy ways I could have simply bypassed the more difficult and frustrating parts. Just keep this general rule in mind: if you feel like you're banging your head against a wall and not making progress even when it feels like you should be able to, maybe you just need to explore elsewhere and do something else first.

I'll leave it at that, but don't be too ashamed if you need a guide or a hint to nudge you in the right direction. This is a challenging game at times, and the DLC only ramps up the challenge. Regardless of its arguable shortcomings, I still think Echoes of the Eye is mandatory to experience if you enjoyed Outer Wilds. Highly recommended.

For any fan of Cyan Worlds' famous Myst series, Obduction is absolutely a must-play.
For anyone who never played those but is also a fan of 3D puzzle games that challenge the player to think critically, explore the environments, and pay close attention to detail, Obduction will probably satisfy.
For anyone else...Obduction will likely do nothing but frustrate.

I am a member of the first group, so naturally I really enjoyed this game despite its inarguable shortcomings and flaws.

Pros:
- The environments are beautifully designed. Even though the graphical quality itself isn't super realistic or state of the art, it still looks great and just realistic enough to be perfectly believable.
- The sense of accomplishment and satisfaction that comes with solving a complex series of related puzzles is immense.
- The game never holds the player's hand. Even when you are given explicit directions by one of the few NPCs, you are still trusted to be able to figure certain things out on your own. This is simultaneously a pro and a con, as I'll explain later.
- The puzzles themselves can be quite intimidating at first glance, but never so much that you can't dive in somewhere and figure out the basics of what needs to happen at the very least. Overall, the puzzle design of the game is quite good, although I wish more of the puzzles had the same complexity as one of the late-game challenges.
Edit: That late-game challenge I refer to is BAD for a variety of reasons not involving its complexity. Just for clarification.
- The story is mainly told through reading books, notes, and journals. These are rarely particularly long and most of them can be safely ignored for players who don't care about the story. The plot is fine and compliments the gameplay, despite not being anything amazing.
- The general vibe of the game is extremely similar to that of the Myst games, which gives the game an extremely nostalgic but also refreshing feeling. It really is the closest thing to a modern day spiritual successor for Myst that we have gotten at this point.

Cons:
- As I stated earlier, the fact that the player's hand is rarely held sometimes works against the quality of the game. For example, the main NPC whom you interact with will occasionally instruct you on what to do next, but conveniently leave out really important details that the player will absolutely not be able to figure out on their own without exploring at random. I'm talking about a certain part of the game where a bunch of immovable equipment is blocking a door, but then inexplicably disappears to allow you passage through that door. Apparently the NPC had moved the equipment out of the way while you were off doing another puzzle, but doesn't think to tell you this when it comes time for you to pass through that door.
- The game's most interesting puzzles are sadly dragged down slightly by frequent loading screens. I personally never found them to be significantly irritating, and the time per loading screen never goes for longer than about 15 seconds, in my experience. But that still adds up to a lot of time just waiting on the game without being able to do anything due to just how frequently these screens appear in certain sections of the game.
- This kind of goes hand in hand with the aforementioned point, but I feel that it warrants its own con. A large portion of the game requires the player to do lots of backtracking. This is made worse by the fact that the player character only has two speeds: walking and running. Thankfully the caps lock button allows you to stay toggled to the running option, but after a while it still feels like you should be able to move even faster. There were too many points in this game where I dreaded the path I'd have to follow because I knew it would take me a long time to physically get to my destination. (Maybe this con could have been alleviated had I played in the optional point-and-click movement mode, but I am not sure.)

For members of the other two groups that I mentioned at the beginning, there is a solid chance that you won't enjoy Obduction at all due to the problems. But being a fan of Cyan Worlds' older games, I was easily able to push through the negatives and have a thoroughly rewarding experience.

2024 Update: Second Wind's Design Delve series claims that the final puzzle of this game is the worst puzzle in any game ever made. Not sure I agree with that, but still...lol.