I’ve spent so long on Noita, I love it and it treats me so badly. I’m really not very good at it. I’ve barely scratched the surface and largely stopped after I had a successful (basic no secrets) run. I still go back to nuke myself into oblivion every now and then. I do love setting everything on fire.

I finished Dave the Diver a few weeks ago, and I really enjoyed it. For me, it hit this sweet spot of “Remember where everything is and grind the same thing over and over” without getting boring.

Those are some nice games and while nothing could yet fill the Outer Wild shaped hole for me (except the DLC, play that one if you haven’t yet) I can also recommend the following games which are in one way or another similar (but again: only in certain parts, nothing is like OW yet):

• Heaven’s Vault (very multi-branching/non-linear adventure where you learn to decipher a fictional language while traveling through space with your robot companion, great writing & world building)
• Eastshade (relaxing open world with great atmosphere & without combat where you solve quests by painting pictures)
• Return of the Obra Dinn (nice logic game where I really felt like a detective and also wanted to figure the story out)
• Disco Elysium (contender with OW for Best Game Ever in my mind. Wonderful, life like characters and the writing plays your emotions like an instrument from laughing to crying and back. Pirate it however, since the original developers got duped out of their studio)

Also: play the Talos Principle DLC if you like the atmosphere and style of the main game. I really enjoyed the forum/community board feeling from the imprisoned robots in the DLC as somebody who lived through the 2000’s internet era.