Outer Wilds is about backpacking in outer space

When you stick with making a game for six years, it has to be a passion project. And that’s what Outer Wilds is for Alex Beachum, the creative lead who started the PC game as a student project, formed a studio in Los Angeles Mobius Digital, and then teamed up with Annapurna Interactive to bring it home. It’s coming out this year, and I got a good look at the near-finished product.

The Outer Worlds comes from a concept that big publisher like Activision would never approve. It’s like NASA meets camping, Beachum said in an interview with GamesBeat. It’s an open-world mystery in which you explore a solar system trapped in an endless time loop at the end of the universe. I asked Beachum if it was “Firewatch in space,” and he laughed. The art on the planet is styled like a “national park poster.”

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Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.