Outer Wilds: Archaeologist Edition

Outer Wilds is a game about knowledge, and it is very hard to describe without ruining it. You are the newest astronaut in a village space programme, given a rickety wooden ship and a solar system to look at, and twenty-two minutes later the sun goes supernova and you wake up at the campfire again. Nothing carries over between loops except what you have worked out. There are no upgrades and no keys — the only thing that unlocks a place is understanding how to get there. The solar system runs on real physics and every world is on a timer: sand drains from one planet into another, a city sinks, a comet approaches the sun. Piecing together what happened to the Nomai, who were here first, is the entire game. Single-player, and best played knowing nothing. The Archaeologist Edition is a single purchase containing the base game and the Echoes of the Eye expansion, which adds a substantial new location and a second mystery layered into the same loop. It is a genuine one-key product on Xbox and PlayStation; on Steam and Nintendo the same name is used for a discount bundle of two separate items rather than a single SKU.