MOBIUS DIGITAL

The Outer Wilds studio heals its pandemic wounds - and hunts for a new galaxy-brain project

- SAMUEL HORTI

Echoes Of The Eye, the expansion to the planet-hopping adventure Outer Wilds, was praised when it launched in September scenes, developer Mobius Digital was suffering. A repetitive motion injury in early 2020 left co-creative lead Alex Beachum unable to use a mouse and keyboard for much of the pandemic, so he could only work in a pair with a remote colleague. Loan Verneau, Mobius's other lead designer, caught COVID-19 early, and long-term side effects lingered. "Half of the pandemic I spent struggling to stand up and stay conscious," he says.

It wasn't just the team's health that took a hit. Remote working dented the ideals they'd built during the four-plus years developing 2019's Outer Wilds, which started as a scrappy student project and became a triple BAFTA winner. Mobius had prided itself on healthy office hours but for some staff the days began stretching into the evenings, with lines between work and home life disintegrating. Without casual coffee breaks, interpersonal frictions went unresolved, Verneau says, and ideas flowed slower over Discord than in an open-plan office. "It definitely has taken its toll on the team in a lot of ways," he says.

Nobody at Mobius has fallen out of love with Outer Wilds, but with a sequel ruled out, they're eager to move on. "Boy, am I ready to step away," tech artist Logan Ver Hoef says. "There are only so many Christmas parties you can go to where it's like, 'Yep, still working on that same project. Yep, it is year six'." Stepping away initially means a month of extra vacation to help with "patching and healing" the wounds of the pandemic, Verneau says. Then, the team must address what Beachum calls the "vacuum of purpose" that Outer Wilds has left behind.