This blog post contains mild spoilers for Outsider. Galantrix nonetheless believes that this content enhances the Outsider experience, even if not required for thoroughly enjoying the game. If you don’t like spoilers, don’t read this post. Also, please make sure to read the Outsider Disclaimer before moving forward.

SURPRISE! OUTSIDER IS NOW ON STEAM!

If you want to support Outsider, please wishlist it by clicking the “Add to your wishlist” button right below the screenshots. It’s free and doesn’t commit you to buying the game. Steam automatically increases the game’s exposure based on the number of wishlists; you will help the game’s success with this single button click!

Those following my emails probably didn’t expect Outsider to be on Steam quite yet, but it did happen! This isn’t a full presence but a “Coming Soon” page; many video games nowadays can go through many stages before full release, including “Coming Soon”, “Early Access” and “Preorder”. To avoid overwhelming those who aren’t very familiar with Steam, let me just talk about where Outsider currently is.

The “Coming Soon” stage aims to start advertising a game and build momentum before more details are revealed. It’s very much like the “teaser” trailers you see at the theaters (assuming you still go to theaters!). On the current Steam page, you can already see actual game screenshots, a detailed description and a video that is more about “setting the mood” than showing actual gameplay footage.

Most of the work for this teaser was completed before the end of 2024, but I still had to spend almost a week to get everything pristine for this official reveal. It was like the cliche where 90% was done, but I still had to wrap up the remaining 90%! The trailer required multiple iterations, including a complete reboot from an earlier, doomed concept. The art required major touch-ups using the skills I had learned since I had prepared the earliest marketing materials. Even the description went through multiple rounds of polish to ensure the store presence looked as good as possible, given the stage of development.

January wasn’t only about getting Outsider to Steam, however. I finished writing the remaining Demo content and graphics by adding over 15000 words of branching narrative and the first parts of the game’s overarching puzzle… Oh, I haven’t talked about puzzles before, have I? Let’s make it the second surprise of this email, then! :)

Outsider contains a single, optional tough puzzle made of several smaller parts. This isn’t your run-of-the-mill riddle, but something in the style of MIT’s “Puzzle Hunt”, where you might not even see where the puzzle is! This is obviously not part of Nando’s logs, but something I created to represent Nando’s uncertainty during the story. He did have to solve some kind of real-life puzzle as part of his journey, but there are hardly any details about what that looks like. He mentions dreams and a big realization towards the end, but that’s all I know. Like other obscure parts of Outsider, I had to be resourceful and come up with something that fits the spirit of his experience. Players can’t “be Nando”, but I can still try to make this game as close as possible to an “Extraterrestrial Contact Simulator”.

Players who aren’t good at puzzles or simply don’t like them can completely ignore I ever talked about puzzles. Many, but not all, game endings can be accessed without solving the puzzle. I wanted to ensure everybody had a good experience playing Outsider while leaving a “special somethin’” for puzzle lovers. Also, this isn’t 1980… People who want to see all endings can just use their favorite Search engine to look up the answer and move on. As the game’s author, I hereby declare that doing so doesn’t make you a videogame cheater. Those who disagree can go create their own games! :)

In the month ahead, I’ll be fully dedicated to getting the playable demo out of the door. I might run a limited playtest as a sanity test, but if everything works out, I should be able to announce the demo’s availability in the next update. This means that anyone with a Steam account will be able to play 4 chapters of Outsider on a Windows PC, amounting to around 1-3 hours of free content (depending on reading speed and willingness to explore all branches).