Dani spent a few hours in One Lonely Outpost. It wasn’t love at first sight – but at second.
(One Lonely Outpost) looks like a Stardew Valley in outer space and reads like one on the Steam page: We land on a barren world that cannot be inhabited without a spacesuit. We set up camp here and try to survive somehow. To do this, we mine ores, grow plants and slowly build up a settlement.
And the key word here is really slow
Because unlike big farming and life sim hits like Harvest Moon and Stardew Valley, there is no village next door to support us with the first friendly faces and sensible advice. There are also no open waters to water our plants with and even the tutorial is very sparse. We have to fight our way through everything bit by bit. From understanding the controls to realising that we have to mine ice crystals for new water.
One Lonely Outpost throws us, almost like a survival game, into a world that doesn’t want us at first, with the aim of making it our own. And that’s exactly what divides the community of this game, which recently entered Early Access. The current 72 percent positive Steam ratings, together with the reviews written, speak volumes:
“Maybe I expected too much. I thought it would be a Stardew Valley in space. But there is almost nothing to explore. There are very few different resources. I think I just expected too much.”
You have to earn everything, it’s a lonely outpost, you start with yourself and your rolling inventory box of feelings – there’s a real sense of work to be done and a strong achievement when you’ve done it.
A bit like The Martian
The main problem with One Lonely Outpost is not that we have to work everything out piece by piece, but that it takes about three to four hours before the intergalactic hay bale really gets rolling.
Similar to (Ridley Scott’s The Martian
) we are first occupied with the most basic things: Planting crops, building ovens, creating a basis for life. Then the first colonists finally join us and keep us company. The initially monotonous daily routine – watering the fields and quarrying stones – turns more and more into a colourful bouquet of tasks.
We make contact with aliens, start terraforming the planet to make it more habitable, have to manage our requirements for more colonists in a time frame and at the same time supply all the people already living on our planet with enough food and other goods. With each additional day we play, One Lonely Outpost becomes a little more complex and exciting.
Because of the slow start and the long way to the first inhabitants of the planet, each partial success just feels twice as good. We can literally see the planet change under our hand. At the same time, we have the great advantage of getting to know the inhabitants in a blob-like way and almost counting the days with joyful anticipation until a new colonialist lands on our planet.
Editorial conclusion
One Lonely Outpost will not meet with great love from everyone. Be it because in its current state it is still a bit immature from the controls or the slow entry simply takes too long before it is really exciting. That’s similar to saying “after the first book it gets really good!”. And I’m sorry, but: One Lonely Outpost gets really good after the first three to four hours of tutorial and finding your way around! It pulled me into that “just one more day” spiral just like Stardew Valley and co. did before.
At the same time, I like the idea of the ever-increasing level of difficulty. At the beginning I was still wondering how to fill my time sensibly, but after only one ingame month I already have to manage my time well. Every day there is a new task or a new story chunk that I can work on.
If all this doesn’t put you off, I beg you: give one Lonely Outpost a chance to earn your love.
