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dkirschner's Exo One (PC)

[February 3, 2022 11:24:18 AM]

This one is something different! I got bored of repetitive gameplay within an hour, but it's definitely neat. You pilot an orb (a piece of advanced alien technology) across bleak planets' landscapes. The orb can increase and decrease gravity, making Exo One feel like a snowboarding game (increase gravity on the downhills to speed up, decrease it on the uphills to launch). It can also turn into a disc and glide, it can do a little double hop to gain some height, and it can dive toward the ground (diving and pulling up is how you stay in the air for a long time). This looks and feels super cool. You develop an easy rhythm of arcing across the environment as get better at the controls.

The variety of the game comes in the different planets and weather patterns on them, though it's not a huge variety. The first three planets feel really similar, and then you get to a water planet where instead of going up and down hills, you can glide and bounce on moving waves when storms come, which was mesmerizing. Later on, there is a level on an asteroid where you have to gain momentum to launch into a star's orbit to get to your goal, and there are some other different elements across the 12 planets.

Your goal is always to follow the blue beacon in the distance, which is like a teleporter that takes you to the next planet. You can't die or lose, so you just...go toward the blue light. In every planet, all the time. Go toward the blue light. I can see an allure of Exo One as a relaxing game, mastering the ups and downs of your orb over the terrain, taking in the beautiful planets and chill ambient space music. Oh, caveat on the beautiful planets. The ground on all the planets (except the water) looks like shit. As I pondered how the game can be so beautiful, except the ground, I decided that is incentive for the player to get better at controlling the orb and spend more time hurtling through the air and less time slumming it along the ground. Get better and you never have to see the ugly ground!

There is also an abstract story here that I didn't entirely piece together. Something about a space mission to Jupiter that went bad, and I think that you are (a person? an alien?) piloting this orb to save the crew and get them back home. I could be very wrong about this, but you'll see lots of scratchy images of Jupiter and a picture of smiling astronauts as you play.

So, all in all, I didn't particularly care for this in terms of the experience after the first hour or so, but I like it theoretically. If you like movement-based games (racing, flying, skateboarding, etc.), you might be more inclined to enjoy the mechanics of this one.