What's incredible to me is that the successfully make a game where all of the progress is through information gained while exploring, there are absolutely zero artificial barrier to progress. Once you know the world, you can finish in one play through.
Most games cheat regarding exploration by tying exploration to unlocks in the game. As a huge metroidvania fan, this is can still be amazing.
It's just nearly unbelievable that the team behind Outer Wilds achieved this all through clever construction of the world they build.
On top of this you get a very emotionally compelling narrative and music that instantly gives me chills when I hear it.
Honestly the perfect game.
Outer Wilds excels with creative planets full of adventure, while Riven is a slow paced affair that is impressively dedicated to creating an intricate world wordlessly.
Without written aids ala the logs in Outer Wilds, gleaning insights from disparate information in Riven often means scrawling down notes & looking for patterns.
While I highly reccomend Riven for fans of the structure of Outer Wilds, Riven is now a dated game that operates at a glacial pace. I played it recently at a time that I was taking a break from more modern games and I think that did wonders for helping me adjust to its conventions & pace. If you give it a shot know that it'll demand your patience before it'll absorb you into its world.
Riven and its siblings (Myst, etc) are the only games that I've ever had to take down written notes to plan how to approach and solve the puzzles. Riven is more than just a play-for-fun-with-no-benefit way to spend my time; it is an intellectual exercise.
One way they achieved this is they made a paper prototype they could play through quickly to make sure they got the narrative and knowledge and progression down. They also made a simple digital point and click version (using the Java library Processing, apparently) and got that rock solid before they built the rest of it. Very smart, and something people should consider if they want to make their own narrative games.
They have a whole article about it, including pictures[1]. I only wish the simple digital version could be downloaded. I'd love to play around with it now that I've beaten the game.
[1]: https://www.mobiusdigitalgames.com/news/demaking-outer-wilds
It does contain spoilers but the games creator wrote a masters thesis on this game[1].
[1] https://digitallibrary.usc.edu/Share/o7d2vbuapqgd2mkjke8j752...
Also, skip the DLC together.
Dying is not depicted in bloody ways, should be acceptable even for kids of certain age.
A masterpiece indeed