Outer Wilds is the game that sold me on “knowledge as progress” as a design idea. You play a tiny astronaut in a handcrafted solar system that ends in 22 minutes. Then it loops. The only thing that persists between loops is what you, the player, have figured out — no stats, no items, no unlocks. Just understanding.
The moment the structure clicked for me was realising the sun going supernova wasn’t a fail state. It was the clock. I could use the loop to experiment with dangerous astronomy, because dying was just Tuesday.
I’ve since become more interested in games that trust players to be curious. Not the kind that feed you exploration through quest markers — the kind that let you wander around going “wait, what’s that?” until you accidentally understand the whole thing. Playing Outer Wilds felt like being a kid again.
I won’t spoil any of it. Go play it.