Out There Somewhere is a 2D platformer game which would have fit right in back on the NES. While the graphics are probably a bit better than what would have been around back then in some places, on the whole this is a pixel graphics game whose gameplay harkens back to a much simpler time.
You play Yuri, a space cop in hot pursuit of Grigori, some sort of bad guy. You start out trying to shoot down his ship, fail, and then have to travel across the planet to confront him and collect a light orb to repower your ship and beat him down in the end-game.
The game is very simple. It claims to be inspired by Cave Story, Super Metroid, and Portal, but honestly it is its own thing, and not very much like any of those games. It is very linear, there isn’t much of a plot, and it is very centered around its central game mechanic – a teleportation gun.
When Yuri fires his gun, he gets teleported to wherever it hits, with whatever momentum he presently has being preserved. He cannot teleport if he is already right next to the surface he would be teleporting to.
He can also jump.
These two mechanics make up pretty much all of the gameplay in the game. You do eventually get a gun you can kill monsters and destroy certain blocks with partway through the game, which opens up a few more puzzles, but most of the game is centered around platforming with the teleportation gun – including one room towards the end of the game with no platforms in it at all, which the player scales by shooting shots across the room, landing, then jumping just as the shot hits the far wall.
The game cost 50 cents on sale, and is extremely short – this is the sort of thing you can beat in a single sit down. I was pretty heavily achievement and secret hunting and beat the game in 89 minutes my first time through. All that’s left at that point is trying to figure out how to acquire the last few secrets, many of which are pretty devious (such as requiring you to go through about a third of the game without saving once so you can die and respawn at the very start with the block-destroying gun, in order to acquire one of the secrets).
Was it worth 50 cents and an hour and a half of my time? I can’t say I wasn’t entertained by it, but it wasn’t high-quality entertainment – the game is decent enough as what it is, but it is not exactly aiming for the stars. If you like 2D platformers with simple, straightforward mechanics, this is probably a decent choice for you; if you like nice graphics, complex gameplay, a sophisticated story, or anything else like that, you’ll probably be disappointed by this game.
3.5