Out There: Oceans of Time

the game is fun, and had promise! sadly they announced the closure of the company so don't expect any updates...

Picked this up in the 2025 Spring Steam Sale. Bought this because I really liked the original Out There. Basic saves apparently do not work properly even in the latest version. I just lost hours and hours of progress. Totally unacceptable. Also annoying that 3440x1440 is not supported and info will clip off screen. Seriously? Frankly this is a Do Not Buy--you're putting any time invested at risk. I can live with the lack of proper widescreen support but saves breaking in a final version? That's unprofessional.

A daring attempt to expand on Out There: Omega Edition, but sadly lost focus and fell flat. New ship management gameplay can be fun; ship navigation feels largely the same as OTOE; UI is streamlined with hotkeys, can have softlocks occasionally though but nothing can't be fixed with good old alt+f4, remember to save often. Unfortunately the core feature of OTOE: survival, is not here in OTOOT. Staying alive is so utterly trivial you have to actively sabotage your run to be in real danger of an early game over. Another core feature of OTOE, learning alien language is also getting sidelined here. Choosing the right response will only slightly alter the inventory of alien vendor and recruit roster. Hell, you can safely ignore the shopping system entirely, since resource is hardly a problem. And lastly, to me the real crime is the writing in this game. In OTOE the random events that happen when you jump to a new star did a good job setting the atmosphere of the game -- the dread in face of the unknown, the wonder of the universe, the helplessness of flinging oneself into the void using utterly inexplicable alien technology, the struggle to tread the fine line between functional and lunatic and functional lunatic, and mixed with a healthy does of body horror. But all this, is absent in OTOOT. The random encounters become few and far between, and what left of them reads as bland as the instructions printed on the back of your instant noodle package. The new protagonist, Cpt. Nyx and her sidekick are not that likable, and the main plot is... whatever. The canon ending also somewhat undermined the plot of OTOE, [spoiler] making the lone protagonist's self-imposed crusade to save humanity kind of a joke, since he/it is not human to begin with... [/spoiler] Oh and there's one steam achievement, [spoiler] Proto-Culture [/spoiler] , which is broken at the time of writing of this review. And the community manager over at the official discord confirmed there's no planned fix in sight, making it impossible to 100% this game. If you are into that kind of thing, avoid this game.

Broken in the same spot as the first time I played they still haven't fixed it !!

The game trashed over an hour of game time. I loaded my game and for some reason it had me far, far, far back from where I last was. I had saved at at least half a dozen White Dwarf save points, but it didn't load me there - it loaded me at the last major plot place, for some reason. I lost my new ship, an hour of my life. I was about to give this a thumbs up.

3/10 - SAVES ARE REALLY FAR APART. no reason for this..... - ship storage system is god awful. can hardly hold anything and i have no idea what to toss cause you have soo many different types of items and you can only hold a few stacks of them stacking up to 20 - i have the blueprint, i have the martial, why cant i build it??? not sure how far i need to go into the game to upgrade my ship or buy a new one, but i dont think im gonna make it - game crashed and i lost over an hour of play time....oof

This game did dissapoint a bit at launch but it having only mixed (53%) reviews currently is not doing the game as it is now justice. They later patched this game with a huge patch and since then many of the things it got scolded for initially have been corrected. Its now very playable with interesting mechanics and all the glitches i noticed at first seem to be gone. If you like survival roguelikes with a branching story and a nice crafting system you should try this.

The animation where you fly to/around a system look great. The ship and alien crew designs (as in, the visuals) look suitably alien. This gives you great screenshots and trailer footage. Everything else feels like it got about 80% done and then just... gave up. I guess the budget ran out and the developers had to move on to the next project, whether they wanted to or not. The alien crew and villagers are not [b]mechanically[/b] alien - their species has no impact whatsoever. That compares unfavourably with Star Control UQM (the free one), where each species had a distinct personality. The missions were... OK. Maybe get this at a deep discount, but even then, only maybe. https://store.steampowered.com/app/358920/Star_Control_I_and_II/

Hi everyone, I am writing this after having finished the game using the red story line , I am planning to do the other ones at a later date. But at first before buying any game I check many negative comments to see if there is a pattern but here these are unfounded, in my mind there is no valid negative side to this game aside of preferences. The so called saving issue is nonsense as in the game you need to fly your ship to a saving satellite and save the game there and with that you will not have issues. I quit the game many times after saving and had no issues continuing later. For the gameplay , I can say that I own the first game "Out There: Ω" and this new version is much better in many regards. Both are Indie games and well suited for weak and older computers like many indie games. Oceans of Time has a bit more 3D as the first game "Out There: Ω" but is mostly 2D. The big difference and advantage is that this version is much better balanced , meaning if you manage properly you can survive , the 1st game "Out There: Ω" was more difficult and any random event could kill you , here in Oceans of time it's not so random. The game is much about managing and taking the right decisions, if you played the 1st game "Out There: Ω" you will not need to learn to play as all is mostly the same , only the story lines are different. If you are a new player you will have a small learning curve, but it will be rewarding on the long run. The worst decision in this game can cost you in reputation and cause permanent crew moral negative points that will not go away, I was hit by that and had to adapt the ship to give morale to compensate. The things you will lack are space in the ships and a coordinate system to find planets again where you might have found an abandoned ship that you might want to use as storage place for resources. But these "missing" elements are wanted to keep the game balanced. In my playthrough I got the ship “Vanguard” which had 36 slots , I believe it’s the largest, all others were smaller including the tree of life. I can only recommend this game if you like to think what to do and if you like story lines.