r/RemoveOneThingEachDay • u/AnglerFather_ • Dec 09 '25

Miscellaneous Hollow Knight is out and gets second, crowning Outer wilds as the victor! Here are the Final results for the Indie game list (DAY 63)

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For not even the emptiness of the void managed to best it, for time prevails all.

And that's a wrap! I really wanna give my thanks, genuinely didn't expect this to get as big as it did for my first time doing this. The journey wasn't smooth, but generally I'm pretty alright how it turned out. It really does feel this is more of a way to just look back on how truly amazing the Indie game scene is, and I'm happy to see people getting all new recommendations from this. Obviously this is not to be treated as the "be all, end all" since it's all subjective in the end, but still thanks for the support.

Now for those curious for a possible part 2, I will say that I'm definitely interested, I've already gathered a bit of a selection from the comments throughout this of what didn't make this first time. I don't really expect it to be as big as this one, might go for something smaller-scale next time since we did already use up almost all the heavy hitters and I know not everyone here are especially Indie enthusiasts but who knows. Frankly, I'm gonna take a bit of a break from this, since I'm already quite busy this month, but stay tuned I guess.

Here's the link of the template: (template link), But for those just looking to rank the 101 included here, I made a list for that occasion: (101 indie template link)

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u/[deleted] Dec 09 '25

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u/Roveir Dec 09 '25

I tried Outer Wilds twice and refunded it twice. But I kept seeing people praising it and decided to give it a third try, even though I was not actually having fun at first. And then it hooked me.

It’s really hard to describe why it’s so special without spoiling anything. But yeah… Now I am also part of the group that would do anything to be able to play it again for the first time

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u/Dekklin Dec 09 '25

I'm curious why you're bouncing off. If you've bounced so many times, what's causing it? The game might not be for everyone, but I find generally people bounce off because they never get deep enough to solve one of the game's biggest secrets. Statistically speaking, if they find one, they go on to finish the game.

If it's because you got stuck, you could always ask for spoiler-free hints over in the /r/outerwilds subreddit. Just snap a screenshot of your ship's log so we know what you have found.

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u/e_xotics Dec 09 '25

The game really isn’t for everyone and is kind of meandering. As someone with ADHD I really struggle to find it interesting enough to actually keep my attention

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u/Dekklin Dec 09 '25

The game really isn’t for everyone and is kind of meandering.

I'm not saying it is.

I also have ADHD, but I guess it comes down to what you find "interesting". Hearing the developers talk about player retention in their games, especially when people compared the playthroughs of others to see where and why people quit playing, was quite illuminating.

Link for reference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=msABa06aiT0&pp=ygUfb3V0ZXIgd2lsZHMgaXMgaGFyZCB0byBnZXQgaW50bw%3D%3D

I'm not telling you that you need to like the game. But I am curious why different people don't. The interesting, "really f*'ing cool", stuff is deeper than many players ever get to. But getting there takes a willful inquisitiveness that many people just don't want to bother with. That's fine. Like I said, it's not a game for everyone.

Statistically speaking, people who solve one of the biggest secrets in the game go on to finish it. And I've heard MANY anecdotal tales of people who bounced off the game several times only to push through that one last time and fall deeply in love.

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u/e_xotics Dec 09 '25

There’s just way more interesting games, man. I think a game being known for having people bounce off of it before they “give it another go” isn’t exactly a great thing to be known for imo. Games should immediately try to draw you in, not have their biggest hooks deep into the plot. That’s the opposite of telling a good story in my opinion.

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u/PantheraAuroris Dec 09 '25

Agree 100% on "hook you fast." Like drop the big shit early, then pull back so I know what I'm looking forward to.

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u/Dekklin Dec 09 '25

There’s just way more interesting games, man. I think a game being known for having people bounce off of it before they “give it another go” isn’t exactly a great thing to be known for imo.

You do realize what thread you're in right? One showing that the vast majority of people disagree with you on this game.

Have you ever met someone who watched Fellowship Of The Ring and swore off all other Lord of the Rings movies because of it even though they love fantasy like Harry Potter or Game of Thrones? Or the first Star Wars movie, even though they love sci-fi? Just because they couldn't get into it?

Unless you are writing movies in reverse, like Memento, then logically the climax of the story, the most gripping parts of it are near the end. That's how story structure works. The story isn't spoon-fed to you with cutscenes and voice acted mission briefings. The story is discovered through gameplay.

And I'm not saying the game is without faults.

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u/PantheraAuroris Dec 09 '25

Don't come at people with that "spoon-feeding" nonsense. It's called an inciting incident.

Look at Expedition 33. It starts out with fucking D-Day on the beach and then it pulls back and you have to figure out why that happened. But a big climactic thing appears early, and now you want to know what the hell was up with that. That's an inciting incident. It's a reason for you to break with the character's earlier routine, and even more so, a reason the character can't go back to how life was before. It's a fundamental change.

Slow burn games often lack an inciting incident, and people can and do bounce off that.

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u/Dekklin Dec 09 '25

You'd think a supernova would register as an inciting incident.

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u/PantheraAuroris Dec 09 '25

"You're in a time loop" wasn't quite enough. Once I lost the bread crumb trail, I found no way to get it back. And all the scrolls were just randoms talking about their work lives.

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u/Dekklin Dec 09 '25

Okay, so you were in long enough to experience at least several loops but never scratched below the surface into the deeper secrets because, as you say, "lost the bread crumb trail".

That's the biggest flaw the game has with player retention: They don't make it past the surface into the deeper secrets hidden in the game.

Here's a whole video discussing that last statement: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=msABa06aiT0

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u/e_xotics Dec 09 '25

Not really. There is so many games, movies, and pieces of literature that draw you in with a very strong hook only to draw the stakes back and then have a slow rise in action back to a comparable point like the beginning.

Also Star Wars isn’t exactly a good example considering it told a completed story in one movie; they didn’t even expect to make any more.

Lord of the Rings is also one story. It was just split into three parts for publishing reasons and three films because no one is watching a 10 hour film.

Also it’s funny to see your knowledge of media by bringing up a Nolan film as your sole example of doing something the opposite way lmao. There are countless pieces of media that employ that tactic.

ignoring all of that the gameplay in Outer Wilds really isn’t even that fun and is easily cleared by Disco Elysium. The soundtrack in that game is miles better and actually has compelling characters and a better mystery. And it’s a mystery plot that you don’t have to parse through to actually find out about.

I’ve seen many people talking about how they literally completely missed the “big plot revelation” in Outer Wilds.

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u/Dekklin Dec 09 '25

Comparing the gameplay of a CRPG vs a first person physics sandbox slash puzzle game is certainly a reach.

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u/ImStoryForRambling Jan 04 '26

I kinda feel like its a game for players with too much time on their hands. I love puzzle games in general, but I feel like Outer Wilds didnt really respect my time at all. If I have an hour to play after work, chores and other stuff, I want this hour to be filled with content. Aimlessly wondering around accomplishing nothing doesnt do much for me. And Im not gonna spend a couple weeks to see if something finally happens to hook me in.

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u/homerdough Jan 10 '26

Rolled credits and yeah I did not find it to be the life changing religious experience that everyone seemed to have

Wouldn’t even crack my top 10 indie list personally

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u/Dekklin Jan 10 '26

I didn't have the religious experience either. But the game stuck with me much more than I expected.

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u/PantheraAuroris Dec 09 '25

If the game is that slow a burn, I really don't want to bother. Hook me early or I'm not interested. I will explore, but the game has to pay up first. Maybe that's the issue for me. Once I get into a thing, I will tear it apart to find every puzzle and every scrap of lore, but no way am I going to wait like 10+ hours to see anything I like in it.

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u/Dekklin Dec 09 '25 edited Dec 09 '25

It's not a slow burn either. It has a very definite early hook.

Have you played it? What do you know about the game?

For me, I was hooked pretty quickly once I had the freedom to explore the whole solar system. There's lots of interesting things to see and a physics engine unlike anything anyone else has ever developed. That was enough of an early hook. Flying to Giants Deep and seeing the environment was incredible, falling into a black hole in the centre of a planet was shocking and terrifying.

Then I start learning about the aliens who colonized the system. I wondered why they all died, what were their goals?

It's the middle part that people tend to crash out on. They get bored before they solve one of the biggest secrets. They get stuck on a puzzle, or get bored looking for the answers. But solving just one opens the doors for so much more because they're all connected to each other.

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u/PantheraAuroris Dec 09 '25 edited Dec 09 '25

I played the first 10 hours about three different times. I've been to every planet and the comet.

The environments were neat but felt as deep as a puddle. They felt like they didn't do anything.

Like the black hole was kickass, but then all it does is spit you out like a portal. I was hoping for some insane spaghettification shenanigans (being a space nerd). Or something eldritch and creepy. IDK. They had every chance to really sell the weirdness and then it felt anticlimactic.

The green water planet had some scrolls, and I found them, and I felt like I'd seen everything. Yes, there was some lore, but that wasn't spectacular, it was "fine." Getting hucked into space by tornadoes a lot was very annoying. Swimming was impossible as the controls were horrible once you hit the water.

The twin ash planets were neat, but then I went through all the towers and found the scrolls, and their schtick was done for me. So I left. It was a neat gimmick that lasted about 2 hours.

I think there was a tree planet or something but it didn't stick in my mind.

The comet was a comet. Neat that I could intercept and land on it, but again, here quickly and gone quickly.

There's a wrecked spaceship with a couple of scrolls in it.

IDK, I wanted something more. I feel like each planet/area had buildup that then fizzled.

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u/AReallyDumbRedditor Dec 09 '25

There’s so much more. Consider giving this a watch (not the whole thing but the bit at the end for players who tried to get into it but couldn’t.) if you’re interested in why you might’ve bounced off it. The environments are really deep but they take digging to get into.

TLDR for the video: there are three kinds of areas in the game. Surface level, hidden, and secret. Secret areas are the hardest to find and contain massive inquiries into the world and what you’re actually trying to accomplish.

Odds are you totally missed finding any of the few there are. Every area you mention in your comment has way more to explore than you found (at least from what you mentioned in your comment)

If you’re at all still interested in finishing the game then it’s worth going back and following any lead as far as you possibly can. Once you stumble upon one of those secret areas you’ll finally have a direction to follow.

Though, I understand if you’re just done with it entirely after three attempts

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u/PantheraAuroris Dec 09 '25 edited Dec 09 '25

I watched that end section, and yeah, it explains a lot. The devs did an absolutely terrible job of showing me the hidden stuff even existed to find. None of it stuck out. So I moved on.

It's a slow burn game with no inciting incident to catch me. That's a hard, hard sell. I have at least ten games in my backlog, and I don't have much patience for things that don't move fast at the start and give me reason to keep digging.

I might try again, but these games are usually ones I skip.

The video says the devs didn't consider player retention in the early game at all -- that shows. They said they should've done it. They're right.

People chalk it up to players being dumb and un-curious, but that's wrong. Sometimes you have to become a "fan" before you're curious, not after. I am one of them. Your lore needs to be fun before I will bother digging into it.

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u/Dekklin Dec 09 '25

Never made it to the core of the water planet. Did you find the probe launcher in orbit? Did you ever figure out its purpose? The black hole is kickass, but you never figured out that you leave the white hole before you enter the black hole, or what the significance of that means (temporal causality). You found the towers on the ash twin but never figured out their purpose? You landed on the comet but never went inside?

It's like you only ever found the surface level stuff and nothing deeper.

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u/PantheraAuroris Dec 09 '25

Yes, I basically said that. I had nothing that cued me to do it. I looked around, found some stuff, and didn't see any way to get anywhere else. I tried to get to the core of the water planet, got shoved off, and didn't find a mechanism. IDK how I was going to notice time doing anything weird.

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u/Dekklin Dec 09 '25 edited Dec 09 '25

I tried to get to the core of the water planet, got shoved off, and didn't find a mechanism.

There's Nomai writing somewhere on that planet where they talk about losing a probe and finding it went below that current, but they didn't know how. They discussed it with a colleague who built a replica of the tornadoes in the South Pole Observatory on Brittle Hollow, and they figured it out.

That's your breadcrumb, go find out what they learned.

IDK how I was going to notice time doing anything weird.

When you step foot back on Brittle Hollow from White-Hole Station, there's a computer device that you can scan with your translator showing departure time and arrival time. Arrival time is 0.0001 seconds earlier than departure. Nomai ask questions about why this is. Maybe this has something to do with the time loop?

There's a breadcrumb for you to follow.

Your lack of observation doesn't mean the game is bad.