Outer Wilds

How they made it

Timeline of the creative process

Inspiration: It began as several small prototypes built around game mechanics.

Workflow: Because everything in the game is on non-static spherical physics objects, we needed custom tools and solutions for many basic problems.

Results: We made Outer Wilds almost entirely with standard 40 hour work-weeks. When we did have a few days of crunch here or there, we forced people to take time off afterwards to recover.

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Tips from the Team

"Tech limitations are more like guidelines than actual rules." - Alex Beachum, Creative Lead , Mobius Digital

"It is easier to work hard than to work well, but I have found that working well often produces good results faster." - Loan Verneau, Creative Lead, Mobius Digital

"Don't pull your ideas from other games - try to look in your own life experience and pull inspiration from outside sources." - Wesley Martin, Art Director, Mobius Digital

See the full team

Inspiration

Mobius works from a design-centric approach. We always start with playable prototypes for mechanics, level design, and narrative beats.

What was your inspiration?

Outer Wilds was Alex Beachum’s thesis in the USC Interactive Media program. It began as several small prototypes built around game mechanics, such as lifting off in a space shuttle or finding a mysterious cabin that moved when you weren’t looking at it. These ideas came together thematically with an emotional prototype where the player watched a supernova while roasting a marshmallow on a small moon. Outside inspirations include Apollo 13, 2001: A Space Odyssey, and the Pictobox gallery in The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker.

How did you approach this challenge?

Mobius works from a design-centric approach. We always start with playable prototypes for mechanics, level design, and narrative beats. Based on the playtests, we iterate on the design and playtest again. Meanwhile, we’re developing art and audio which are integrated into the prototypes as each design element is locked down. Once everything is blocked in with solid design, we do a final pass on lighting and prop placement to enhance the original design goals. Everyone on the team is part designer because we’re all constantly thinking about the game design when doing our respective jobs.

Workflow

Creatively, we’ve had to mold our process to be very adaptive so that we can change as needed based on playtest feedback.

How does your team work across capabilities and disciplines?

Collaboration is a huge focus at our studio because of our design-centric approach.

We start by getting everyone on the same page with extensive onboarding documents, visual and narrative guides, and playable prototypes to make sure everyone knows the feel and tone of the game. We give our team members a variety of tasks throughout development so that each person can broaden their skill set and learn more about working with other disciplines.

How does your approach adapt to the needs of a project?

Creatively, we’ve had to mold our process to be very adaptive so that we can change as needed based on playtest feedback. If an art asset or narrative beat confuses players, we change it. Strategically, we have very flexible scheduling so that we block in time estimates but change them frequently based on design priority. Often we will scrap tasks altogether in favor of new ones based on playtest data. Technically, we try to keep the project as organized as possible for easy editing and quick iteration. Each discipline has to work smart to be able to change on-the-fly based on playtesting, so we have a very adaptable process.

Was there anything out-of-the-box about your approach for this project?

Outer Wilds is such an unconventional project that very little of our approach could be considered out-of-the box. Because everything in the game is on non-static spherical physics objects, we needed custom tools and solutions for many basic problems. We have custom solutions for almost everything: 3D modeling, shaders, fog, ambient light, directional light, object placement, physics, and LOD systems. It was a very unusual project from a tools standpoint, and we learned that investing in custom tools early saved us a lot of time in the long run, which is definitely a lesson we’ll carry forward.

How do you digitally manage your projects?

For digital project management, we use a variety of tools. We use Slack and Discord for communication, Trello for task management, and we have separate Git repositories for Maya files and our Unity project. We also make heavy use of Google Drive for documents and spreadsheets that can easily be shared between collaborators.

How is the pandemic and remote working impacting your team?

Working remotely hasn’t changed our process too much, although we are slowed down a bit since we can’t walk across the office to talk to each other.

Our biggest challenge has actually been that people tend to spend more time sitting at their computer without taking a break! We really value our team members’ health, so we’re trying to encourage people to take more breaks and work fewer hours to compensate, which is a strange problem to have. We are very thankful that we’re able to continue working remotely though, so we are doing our best to make it work.

Results

We’re in the business of making games because we love seeing people play and react to the things that we make.

Any advice for creative teams looking to make great digital work?

Our biggest advice to other developers would be to avoid crunch culture!

We made Outer Wilds almost entirely with standard 40 hour work-weeks. When we did have a few days of crunch here or there, we forced people to take time off afterwards to recover.

We’ve found that our team is much more productive when people have plenty of time to rest, and we think it would benefit other teams as well. Our other bit of advice is to spend time early on tools. One of the main reasons we were able to comfortably avoid crunch is that we spent time at the beginning of development making specialized tools; this greatly improved our sanity and productivity in the long run.

What does being named "best of the Internet" mean to you?

We’re very honored to receive such acclaim for our work on Outer Wilds. We’re in the business of making games because we love seeing people play and react to the things that we make, so any time it affects someone greatly we are thrilled and excited to hear why. We hope that the game can reach as many people as possible so that we can keep making games; Awards like this are great for exposure.