Everything but lost: Exploring the mesmerizing musical legacy of Outer Wilds

gamedeveloper.com:

This interview has been edited for clarity and contains mild spoilers for Outer Wilds and Outer Wilds: Echoes of the Eye.

The universe is a song. Life, death, rebirth. Patterns and loops repeating, evolving, and reemerging in unexpected new ways. A chaotic symphony of existence rippling across the cosmos as choices become memory, and memory becomes myth. But is anyone out there listening?

In Mobius Digital's unexpectedly moving adventure Outer Wilds the answer is a resolute "yes." The title, which asks players to unravel a mystery scattered throughout a solar system on the brink of calamity, is emotive science fiction that dwells on the nature of existence around crackling campfires. Here, cliched threats and dry exposition are replaced with lost signals and forlorn melodies that hint at what came before, and what might yet be still to come.

Motifs are woven into the very fabric of the game, serving as a guiding light as players sift through the stars using their signalscope—a multi-frequency receiver that can hone in on distant signals to help chart a path into the unknown. If the tantalizing mystery at the heart of Outer Wilds is the hook, then its mesmerizing score is the anchor—tethering players to the universe and, above all else, making it feel like home. A place worth saving.

"Everything was created in tandem," explains Outer Wilds composer, Andrew Prahlow, during an interview with Game Developer, noting how he worked in close proximity with Mobius from the outset to ensure the score would become absolutely fundamental to the experience.

We sat down with Prahlow following the release of The Lost Reels, a deluxe edition of the Outer Wilds: Echoes of the Eye soundtrack, which recently won the G.A.N.G. Award for Best