5/5 ★ – QuickPlay's review of Outer Wilds: Echoes of the Eye.

Echoes of the Eye plays like a microcosm of the full game. It’s nearly a mini-sequel within the context of the main game. It’s largely self-contained, except for the limitations of the 22-min loop. Half of the rules you learn in Outer Wilds proper get thrown out, with new ones to piece together. Plus, a wholly new species, story, and culture to uncover and unravel provides a fun reset. It has one of the coolest aesthetics and planet mechanics of all of the other planets, with a Scandinavian-meets-lowland-coastal-Americana atmosphere. There are plenty of “oh wow” moments, and a mid-loop twist that completely blindsided me the first time. Progress feels slow, and you can really only discover one major piece of the puzzle per loop, as navigating the area is difficult. It is decidedly more technically difficult than the base game. The warnings of Echoes of the Eye’s spookier elements kept me unnecessarily on my toes, as most of the time is spent in one of the most well-lit areas of the entire game. The “spooky” parts of Echoes of the Eye are also some of the most difficult of the entire game, and I switched on the “fewer spooks” setting just to make it a tad easier, despite the game’s insistence it’s not the intended experience. Looking back, the spookiness of it all—even in the overall vibe well before you’re actually under threat—does lend itself well to the main thrust of Echoes of the Eye. The horror-lite nature of Echoes is thematically resonant, with “fear” being a key theme throughout the DLC. And being optional DLC, the only thing to push the player forward is their own curiosity, while progressing forward becomes a worse and worse idea, because it does feel menacing and is trying to repel you. And again, it’s optional DLC, so at any point, you could “nope” out and be none the wiser. But the drive to understand the mystery is rewarded not only with a moving tragedy, but also tags in a satisfying and poignant revelation. It could stand to even be a little bit scarier, though I appreciate the desire for it to be accessible. By the time you’re under threat, you know what the threat is. Revealing that threat to be something more distorted and sinister than what you’re already familiar with could have made the ending answers hit that much harder. The story and mystery are harder to parse, with this ancient alien culture relying on the visual narrative of overhead projector slides (as opposed to the written, swirling musings and lab notes of the Nomai). But it’s the puzzle box of it all is still the highlight of Echoes of the Eye. A late-game twist gives a frustrating dead-end gut-punch before unfurling a little further into an incredibly clever puzzle, providing maybe the best lightbulb moment of all of Outer Wilds.