The Wonderment of Space

Exo One falls into a category of games that I don’t get very often; the “I love what I just played, but WTF did I just play?!?” category.

Exo One, from developer Exbleative, is a 3rd person adventure game where you take on the role of a mysterious spacecraft designed using alien blueprints that were intercepted from a far away transmission. Your goal, I think, is to retrace the steps of a doomed Jupiter expedition and find out what happened to the astronauts on board. This is where the “WTF did I just play” part comes into play. The overarching story is loosely told through past conversations between the lone survivor of the expedition who ultimately creates the special Exo One spacecraft and various flashbacks and visions that pop up during gameplay. Everything is very disjointed, and honestly may not even be told in real-time. Are you actually trying to go back in time to help prevent something, or are you truly searching for the expedition after the fact? This story can be interpreted in many different ways, which is awesome, but is also very confusing.

Gameplay hits the former of the category name, the “I love what I just played” part. This spacecraft is unlike any other I’ve ever “flown” in a game before. It has the ability to change its gravitational pull, shape, and can be powered using many different elements of the environment itself. What I love most is how the game opens up slowly on what you can actually do with the craft. At first I thought I was playing one of those “See how far you can go without stopping” games much like Lifeslide, but no. Apparently even if you lose momentum you can still roll at a decent speed. This came as a shocking surprise as I got stuck on a giant pyramid structure and tried as hard as I could to jump and gain momentum only to push forward on the left stick to start rolling up the hill. There are a ton of unique ways to gain and keep momentum in this game that is not entirely obvious unless you randomly find them, and the feeling of doing so is spell bounding.

Another thing the game doesn’t explicitly point out are the extra collectables scattered throughout the worlds. You begin each world without any sense of direction except for the large beam of light that acts as the main waypoint. It’s actually quite impressive how big these worlds really are, and if you go off to explore you’re bound to run into some of these hidden collectables that increase your energy levels. What I first thought to be a linear level progression turned into a semi-open stage of exploration and wonder.

Presentation wise this game is absolutely gorgeous in both graphical ability and sound design. Each new world that you traverse greatly differs from others previously visited and, adding in the new gameplay mechanics of each, helps the game from getting stale. The soundtrack is subtle and poignant and adds to both the mystery and wonder of each of the worlds. A neat feature I never noticed that the devs displayed on Twitter was that some in game events actually coincide with the musical score. Blend this all together and you have a zen experience from start to finish.

Truth be told, I started playing Exo One on a whim when it released on Xbox GamePass and had no idea what the game was about except for the initial description. After playing, I know more than when started but the story is one made for interpretation and I found it quite confusing. The overall experience wasn’t dampened by this, though, and Exo One has become one of my favorite exploration games of this year.

I would highly recommend a playthough and doing so is not a huge time investment. I was able to clear the main story in only about 2 hours (Without finding many extras).