Outer Wilds is often named alongside Inscryption (which I have played) and Subnautica (which I have not) as a game you need to avoid spoilers for, because discovering the game's content is what the game is really about.

I inferred that this was because, like Inscryption, the game contains some big secret that subverts the entire way you see the game. So I was surprised to discover that this is not the case at all, but rather the point of the game is to explore your little solar system and learn the story of the Nomai, the civilization that predated your own, before the time loop ends and you reset back to the beginning. (This is all either learned during the tutorial or is in the game's description on Steam, so no spoilers here.)

Since the only thing you gain as you play is knowledge (including things your ship can, conveniently and inexplicably, record and remember across loops, such as radio frequencies and location coordinates), I do see why one needs to avoid spoilers. Accidentally learning something about the world would allow you to bypass some of that exploration and blunt the experience of discovery.

That said, I found the whole experience somewhat underwhelming. There were a small number of "Oh!" moments—just three that I recall—and a whole lot of "okay, sure" ones. You find out that there's a mystery, and you learn the answer to that mystery, and it's not all that mysterious. Sometimes this happens if you learn things out of order, and you learn the answer before you learn the question—which is inevitable given how nonlinear the game is—but sometimes the answer is just not all that interesting.

The other piece that disappointed me is that, for a puzzle game, the movement is surprisingly challenging. There were several sequences I had to repeat several times, either because I died or because I got myself into a situation that I couldn't recover from, because they required a certain amount of skill and/or speed that I lacked. There was more than one moment when I told myself "this can't be the intended solution, it's too hard for a puzzle game" and it turned out to indeed be the intended solution. I'd have a hard time recommending this game to fans of "pure" puzzle games, because the execution required could be a real barrier.

So while I generally enjoyed the game overall, and I'm glad I played it because its core gimmick is somewhat unique, and it wasn't very long, I have a hard time recommending it, and I'm very glad I got it in a code trade and not at even half price.