• Summary:

Out There Somewhere is a clean, attractive, fun 2D platform puzzler with a unique Portal-like teleporting mechanic. The puzzles are fun and the world and characters are enough to keep you going. However the game is let down by some very odd design choices, abruptly short length and some dips in quality throughout the experience. It's a very cheap $2 game, so I can't be too critical, however I am disappointed because the central puzzle mechanics are truly fun, original and show occasional moments of brilliance, and I feel like these puzzles and ideas could have been expanded much further to make a full-length experience. I can see there was huge potential in this game, but clearly something happened or the developer just lost interest. Still a nice, short, sweet experience and well worth the $2, warts and all.

• Long Version (sorry, I rambled, it's a problem I have)

Out There Somewhere is a $2 game on Steam, and it’s a rather short, simple game and so I’m going to try to keep this review similarly short and sweet. The reason I became interested in this game was because it mysteriously disappeared from the Steam store. People just want what they can’t have, isn’t that the case? Like with Coke Classic, maybe the whole disappearance was an elaborate marketing hoax, haha!

So, the game sets you down on this alien world with very beautiful and neat pixel graphics (though a lot of repeated textures/assets are used). There’s some arbitrary story about being an astronaut and needing parts to repair your ship, and kill the bad guy, blah blah, we’ve heard it all before, and so you embark on your journey. It’s a 2D platformer but with a twist: you fire a special gun, and when this gun hits and obstacle you are instantly teleported to that location. It’s actually reminiscent of Unreal Tournament (1999) which had a similar gun. The gameplay is all about puzzles, and you could say it’s a bit of a 2D portal or something. Each room/area has various obstacles and things. New elements are introduced like mirrors, lasers, pass-through grates, etc. Also, like Portal, momentum is conserved during teleport so this is often used for the puzzles too. All the puzzles were pretty easy, nothing took me longer than a minute or two to solve.

As you explore the planet you bump into little alien locals who want to help you or offer you advice or need saving from cages. These bits of dialogue often give a little bit of comic relief and add some charm and personality to the experience.

Now let’s look at the negatives. To be honest, I was taken by surprise when the game ended so suddenly. It costs only $2 on Steam, so it’s OK to be short.. and yet I thought the teleporting mechanic was quite novel and unique, along with the other environmental puzzle elements. There was so much room here to build upon and make many more rooms with much more complex and difficult ideas and combinations. But unfortunately just when things are starting to get interesting the game abruptly comes to an end. I have a hunch that this game was going to be much bigger but the dev decided to just tie up the loose ends and abandon it as a little cheap game.

Another strange thing is the shoot-em-up horizontal space shooter sections. There’s one at the start and the very end of the game. It’s just a really uninterested uninspired bullet hell type side-scroller thing where you avoid shots from the bad guy and hold down your button to slowly deplete his HP bar. So boring and completely out of place in this game, I have no idea why on earth those sections were included.

Ultimaltely, unfortunately, this review ended up being way longer than I intended. At certain points I liked this game, there are some occasional strokes of pure genius in level and puzzle design, along with music art and other elements. But it also seems a bit cobbled together a amateurish, especially with the abrupt end, the shooter sections and other strange dips in quality. Overall, I enjoyed the same and it was worth the money but I can’t fully recommend; if you’re looking for amazing ultra-cheap platformers, there are plenty (like Baezult 1 & 2) which are much more deserving of your attention.