Outerworld Image

Photography is the kind of hobby that can turn out pretty annoying if you let it, because you can always forget about enjoying yourself and focus on the gear you use. However, you are meant to try and capture interesting moments, not worry about image quality and dynamic range. Granted, no one would care about lenses if they had the opportunity to be first ones to capture the sights on an alien planet.

Outerworld Image is an exploration game in which you get the chance to wander around an alien world and be the first to take photos of everything you can see. Naturally, this is nothing more than a student project at this time, but it can evolve into something much greater with a bit of effort. On the other hand, there are a few annoyances in there as well.

You start by having to complete a tutorial, because the game menu is locked unless you do this, which is the first annoyance. The main character can only move, jump, crouch and snap photos, so there’s not an awful lot to explain anyway. However, the tutorial is slow and unskippable, which might raise your blood pressure a little. After that, you are free to explore a whole island and not worry about a thing.

The main character always has his camera out, so you do not need to do anything but click whenever you see something interesting. There’s no feedback on the process and nothing to let you see how the pictures turned out, because the only way to see your shots is to visit the gallery in the main menu, apparently. That’s not very handy, especially since it’s important to know how your picture is framed and whether it needs adjustments.

As for the graphics, the style used is pretty colorful, but that’s not necessarily a problem when an alien planet is involved. It can be difficult to understand what this and that is, but everything is meant to look weird anyway. The low-poly style is quite well-chosen for the theme, even if the poor shading can lead to some accidents if you don’t pay attention to where you’re going.

In the end, Outerworld Image may not be too much of a game at the moment, but at least it can help you relax when you need it. However, it needs more content and better gameplay mechanics before it can keep you busy for more than a few minutes at a time.