Trivia / Outer Wilds

• Colbert Bump: Nerd³'s video on the alpha gave a major boost in popularity to the game when it was still in early development.
• Demand Overload: The previously mentioned Nerd³ video caused such an influx of people looking to try the Alpha build themselves that it temporarily crashed the download servers. Lampshaded when trying to download the game shortly after the initial crash, a message would show up on the page reading: "Due to a sudden and inexplicable surge in traffic, the alpha download is currently offline. We’ll try to have it back up soon!" With the words "inexplicable surge" being a link to the video.
• Development Gag: One in the form of an Easter Egg where one can find the ship from the alpha version of the game buried on The Attlerock.
• Schedule Slip: Several, every year since the end of the crowdfunding process was scheduled to be the release date, only to be pushed back another year, before finally releasing in late May of 2019, after over 7 years of development.
• Similarly Named Works: With The Outer Worlds, to the point that many people regularly mix them with each other to both games' detriment.
• What Could Have Been: Outer Wilds' prototype and pre-alpha trailers show things that were vastly different from its final version:
  • The Interloper was originally named "The Nomad", and had trees in part of its surface.
  • Timber Hearth was mostly stone, and the Hearthians were shorter and dark-eyed. The Attlerock didn't have a name, and was simply "The Moon". A very early video from when it recently changed its name from "Spaceworthy" to "Outer Wilds" shows that the planet had a large city.
  • Brittle Hollow and Hollow's Lantern were once a single planet, that had a fiery lava core instead of the black hole in the final game. The "Spaceworthy" trailer had Brittle Hollow fire meteorites from its core, that would bring down the solid ground, which was held in metal pillars. Riebeck was as short as Chert in the final game.
  • In the prototype that predates the alpha version, Dark Bramble was a cloudy asteroid cluster, with mushrooms and a lighthouse. The Anglerfish could also leave it and pursue the player across the system. It was also the nearest object to the sun. In the Alpha, Dark Bramble didn't have any vines inside itself.
  • Giant's Deep had immense changes as well, its pre-alpha version was known as the "Gale Giant", and had next to no solid surface, having a few floating islands in the air. It also had solid stone rings, and was blue.
  • The Quantum Moon could appear in five locations, instead of six. It also was like a Garry's Mod SpaceBuild planet on the inside, being a spherical cloud with a flat landmass inside.
• Working Title: Spaceworthy.