I got this game for no other reason than it was 49¢ on steam [being on ~75% sale], and I was pleasantly surprised to find that it is an incredible little gem i'd never heard of.
Out There Somewhere is a puzzle platformer with some shooting elements that lasts all of an hour and a half. Although relatively short compared to games being released nowadays, it is commendable for being tightly designed, creative, and charming. If you didn't know, that is a winning recipe in the video game marketplace.
Design and Being 'Tight'
The cool mechanic OTSW really introduces to the genre is the nifty teleportation gun. It allows you to fire a blue pellet that, upon impact with a surface, teleports you to its location.
Along with being able to pass right through enemies, cross long gaps, and generally goof around, the act of teleporting conserves your momentum. This means any acceleration of your character, up, down, left or right, will be your vector of travel the moment the blue pellet connects with a surface. Which makes for a great amount of level design options and interesting puzzles to experiment with.
To make gameplay a bit more depthful, there are colored energy beams that have varying effects. Such as causing you to float in the direction of the beam, or stopping shots from your teleportation gun. These elements combined with quick respawning make for a fun and challenging puzzle platformer that I find extremely satisfying.
Being 'tight' simply means that not a single megabyte of information was wasted on unnecessary fluff to lengthen the duration of the game. MiniBoss Studios had a game mechanic and a story idea and made exactly what was appropriate. The result being a short game, but a rather sweet one at that.
Not to mention the awesome boss fight (ﾉಥ益ಥ)ﾉ
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