Outer Wilds Moves To Full-Time Development - Yay!
We have lift off
I've just checked and we first posted about Outer Wilds [official site], a lovely space exploration game created by Alex Beachum, about two years ago. Since then it's gone on to catch the eye of many others, including the 2015 IGF judges where it scooped the Excellence in Design prize. Returning to the site to see how Outer Wilds was faring I see that it's now being worked on full-time. Hurrah!
It turns out Masi Oka (who played Hiro Nakamura in Heroes) ended up founding a game studio called Mobius and that studio is now developing Outer Wilds.
A message from Alex on the Outer Wilds blog explains as follows:
"I’ve been chipping away at Outer Wilds in my spare time for what feels like an eternity (or at least something measurable on a geological time-scale), writing code by the flicker of candlelight* and occasionally updating the site in a vain attempt to reassure our fans that we haven’t completely abandoned the project.
"Well those days are over, because we're finally working on the game full-time at Mobius!"
* possible dramatization
As for what this means in practical terms he runs through a few of the things the team is currently working on. Those include reworking current locations and adding more bits and bobs to the planets to tie in with the central mystery, a new marshmallow roasting system and a ship computer update to allow it to better track your discoveries. Nifty.