A brief fun and challenging 2D puzzle platformer
I bought Out There Somewhere on a whim. It had good reviews on Steam, cost less than a dollar (was on sale for 49 cents) and was reported to be a short game. I didn’t have much to lose. Either I lose a few hours of my time or have a brief but enjoyable experience, fortunately it was the latter.
Out There Somewhere is advertised as “inspired by Cave Story, Super Metroid and Portal”. Great! I love all three of those games and I would consider Super Metroid to be my top games of all time. The bad news is that the game doesn’t really fit two of the games. It doesn’t have the multiple guns, boss battles and exploration elements in Cave Story and Super Metroid. The only game that is an apt description is Portal. Buyer be warned!
The primary mechanic of the game is the teleport gun similar to the portal gun in Portal. The only difference is that instead of summoning two portals, the teleport gun instantly teleports our hero when the projectile makes contact with a wall. The teleport gun makes way for some very interesting puzzles. One common scenario is where you would need to shoot at a wall and quickly jump to maintain momentum after you teleport.
Aside from the teleport gun, there is a blaster gun that you can use. Not much to say about it other than it takes a few shots to kill anything and doesn’t feel like it has a lot of impact to it.
There’s nothing to the story. In fact, I can sum it up in one sentence. Generic space hero gets his ship shot down, lands on a planet, explores the planet to find parts to repair his ship and once his ship is repaired he kills the bad guy.
I finished Out There Somewhere in an hour. I could have spent more time exploring and searching for hidden secrets but the game never compelled me to. After finding the parts necessary to get the ship up and running, I wanted to explore the world more. Oddly when I walked to the next screen I was abruptly placed back into the ship and fighting a boss.
Overall I had fun with Out There Somewhere. The game is appropriately paced and the puzzles had a nice even ramp in difficulty. The lack of content is concerning, but given the price there isn’t much to complain about. Out There Somewhere shines well especially when compared to other games of the same price.
