In Out There, you're a spaceman who's awoken from cryosleep, all alone and far from Earth. You don't know where you are or how you got there. You fly from one star to the next, desperately keeping your ship operational by mining planets for resources. You meet alien races and trade with them. At first, you won't understand their language, and can only guess at what they want. But with each alien encounter, you learn a new word of their language.
Even in the first 10 minutes of play, you may have a bad run of luck and not scavenge enough resources to keep going, bringing the game to an early end. But with good fortune and smart decisions, you can take over a powerful derelict ship, upgrade it with alien technologies, and learn about the forces at play in this region of space. You can pursue one of four different endings, the most difficult of which has such a convoluted (but cool) solution that you may need a walkthrough.
Every time you warp to a new system, you get a random text passage. Sometimes it's a wry philosophical musing, and sometimes its a potentially dangerous (or fruitful) encounter in which you have to make a decision. I've put dozens of hours into the game and have earned all four endings, and I still get random encounters I haven't seen before.
Out There started as an iOS/Android game in 2014, and was later ported to Steam in an enhanced "Omega Edition" that added the fourth ending. Its pretty art and moody music evoke the main character's loneliness and faint hope for salvation.
I enjoyed the challenge of surviving in Out There. Even when my ship was powerful and the ending I wanted was just a few hops away, I knew that bad luck or carelessness could ruin me, and this kept the game suspenseful. Typos aside, the writing is good and the lore presents a universe that has both a painful history and a whimsical side. I recommend it, and maybe I'll give FTL another chance now that Out There has toughened me up some.
