[alisonatwork]

I didn't get it either, and I play tons of walking sims and narrative adventure games.

It feels more like a roguelike or a survival game to me with it's anti-features like falling damage and time limited resources and inescapable holes to get trapped in. And then you die and have to start all over again from the beginning. The epitome of not respecting the player's time.

It's the only game I have ever refunded on Steam, and annoyingly I keep getting recommended it because it's "like" all the other games that I play even though it clearly is not. I feel like I am in bizarro world with the amount of people who rave about it.

[WheatMillington]

You are deeply misunderstanding the game and its mechanics.

[balfirevic]

> because it's "like" all the other games that I play even though it clearly is not

That part is at least true - there are no other games like Outer Wilds.

[alisonatwork]

I don't know, there are lots of games that feature the same die-and-repeat mechanics - roguelikes, soulslikes, metroidvanias, shmups, survival games - and I don't play those games precisely because I find them tedious and disrespectful of my time. This game for some reason gets grouped in with walking sims and adventure games but in fact it shares little in common with those genres due to the instadeath scenarios, time limits, resource limits, and so on.

[balfirevic]

It is not really die-and-repeat, but die-and-meaningfully-progress even though you seemingly start from the same place. It's so unlike metroidvanias and other stuff you mentioned that I'm wondering if we are talking about the same game.

It is absolutely an adventure game - aside from some arcade elements - you solve puzzles throughout entire game and you retain progress once you've solved them.