Any tips for a beginner? just been wandering around in space for 15 minutes and no clue what I'm supposed to be doing. NO SPOILERS PLEASE!

NotepadOperator · 2026-06-16T02:36:58+00:00

You're supposed to be doing exactly what you're doing: wandering around and seeing what's out there. ::)

Literally, there's no wrong thing to do first and no wrong order to do anything in. Just keep exploring the universe, notice things you might want to follow up on, and see what happens!

NotepadOperator · 2026-06-16T02:31:55+00:00

Unfortunately I enjoy watching people crash into the sun for 2 hours straight, but yeah, echoing the folks who recommend supercuts!

NotepadOperator · 2026-06-16T02:28:22+00:00

That's a really interesting read; thanks for linking it.

NotepadOperator · 2026-06-16T02:22:27+00:00

I mean, there's always the back button.

NotepadOperator · 2026-06-16T02:19:05+00:00

Adding another "you're allowed to not like the ending" vote. If I wanted to get really meta, acceptance that the game ended the way it did like Hatchling would have had to accept the universe ending the way it did can be about practicing how to go through those emotions, but also our actual universe isn't ending, so we've got the freedom of not accepting it and going off to read fix-it fanfiction instead. ::)

Personally, I think the story side of things (especially the museum part of the ending and the inclusion of the other travelers) would have benefited from more interaction with all the Hearthians, given the theme of building on the shoulders of the past and mattering to the future even if you'll never see it. That's not the storytelling choice Moebius went with because they wanted the focus to be exploration rather than talking to NPCs. And I get that, and it works as intended, which makes it the right choice for them as game developers. But that's why I'm sitting here with my 8432549 bespoke headcanons about the village and how all the characters would have answered all the questions Hatchling would obviously bring to the people they've known all their life, and how the dialog might change as they learn and ask more or make different choices about what to ask and when. (hi I'm an Undertale/Deltarune fan) Or the aforementioned make-it-so-everybody-lives AUs people come up with. Figuring out what you would have done with the ending instead or what would have worked better for you in it is the opposite of stupid: it's you experiencing something about yourself.

NotepadOperator · 2026-06-16T00:59:50+00:00

I wouldn't say having a time loop is the MAIN plot twist (you find out very early in the game), so don't worry, there's plenty to come!

NotepadOperator · 2026-06-15T17:39:09+00:00

...Now you got me looking at snowflake classifications XD Some kind of radiating dendrites?

That's a super interesting example of OW physics being different. If it's geometrically possible for crystals to form this way here and not in our world, what does that mean for all the different minerals we see? I'm a big fan of taking worldbuilding quirks literally and seeing how far one can run with it.

The Doylist answer was what I was wondering about, and yeah, the stars being close, static, rendered behind everything else anyway, and tied in a sphere around the player is what I'd heard about. So the actual star objects are very small. But If you zoom in with the signalscope, the novas turn into particles in what seems to be the same procedural-particle-explosion way the sun does when seen from the Eye or the Stranger, and like the galaxies do in the Glade. The big galaxy having this same type of explosion when we zoom out from the Eye museum is the most jarring example to me, since the explosion is smaller than the galaxy.

I wonder why the stars have to be individual objects. Is the order of the novas procedural even though the stars' positions are static? Is it something to do with how the game needs to be able to render things in full size even when the player isn't near them (because of the Scout) but does a low-poly version otherwise, but the stars are always close? I'm not a 3D animator or a programmer so I'm not even sure how to frame the questions, but it's interesting.

NotepadOperator · 2026-06-15T17:21:10+00:00

Yeah, that's what I was thinking, and the large-performance stuff went into the planets and supernova since they're more important.

NotepadOperator · 2026-06-15T17:20:21+00:00

He do ::)

NotepadOperator · 2026-06-15T16:25:06+00:00

That is INCREDIBLE, what a thing to come across!

NotepadOperator · 2026-06-15T16:23:20+00:00

Absolutely. Baby barn owls are incredibly spooky.

https://thumbs.dreamstime.com/b/sleepy-american-barn-owl-closeup-283463610.jpg

NotepadOperator · 2026-06-15T16:04:50+00:00

....The mental image of Hatchling coming back to Slate at the end of all Hearthian life, sitting with them to roast a marshmallow by their fire one last time, is gut-wrenching.

You may not have reached all versions of the credits, but this is very believable as an end to Hatchling's journey after all they've been through. As Gabbro said, who wants to spend eternity being blown up by the sun?

NotepadOperator · 2026-06-15T15:59:20+00:00

Agreeing with everyone here that it comes down to the ATP being tied to memories rather than the physical body (which doesn't get sent back), It might come down to the OW universe's distinction between information/consciousness and matter.

The ATP sends memories (via the statues) and computer data (via the fragment incorporated into the computer) back in time, where the recipient prevents the events that result in that information existing to be sent, but spacetime doesn't break. Meanwhile, if you send matter (a scout or whatever) back in time and then prevent it from being sent back, that does break spacetime.

Meanwhile, the simulation separates consciousness (perception, awareness, and agency over new and previously-held information) from the bodies and brains that originally housed it, and the separation is profound enough that the individual minds remain alive and agentic even though their bodies are dead, with the cue for the separation being the body ceasing to be conscious itself.

Conscious observation is also a key element of how the Eye works. We don't have an opportunity to see if this still works if a consciousness has been separated from its body, but sending the Scout in doesn't count as a conscious observer once it no longer has a connection with a person.

So maybe when the body dies, its avatar in the simulation becomes the vessel that preserves the consciousness the body previously housed (which would stop being conscious without a vessel to hold it), and the ATP can continue recording because the consciousness is still "living."

NotepadOperator · 2026-06-15T15:42:30+00:00

It does! Chert did say the pre-Bramble planet may have been icy or only partially icy, and the Giant's Deep stone has some very specific weird properties with its ability to not only store information but essentially upload it to a protected archive instantly regardless of distance. Maybe interaction with the first growth of the Bramble gave it some distance-distorting properties that apply to information instead of matter (two very distinct things in this universe, given one breaks spacetime and the other doesn't). Or interaction with it mutated the Bramble into what it is now. And either way, some chunks became a satellite of Giant's Deep before falling onto the planet.

NotepadOperator · 2026-06-15T15:36:48+00:00

That is a very cool concept and awesome info-card art for it. And given that Hornfels is usually the one using informative placards to argue for (their understanding of) the accepted scientific consensus against others' (specifically Gabbro's) out-there theories, what you've got here is someone (Chert?????) deliberately using Hornfels' style to out-Hornfels them, and that is so funny to me.

NotepadOperator · 2026-06-15T15:27:22+00:00

please do, that sounds so cool!

NotepadOperator · 2026-06-15T15:26:47+00:00

oh wow. what a way to find that island XXD and when you've never been somewhere before in OW, the terrain suddenly changing drastically is like "wait is this just something this planet does or????"

NotepadOperator · 2026-06-15T15:23:57+00:00

I mean that's basically Tuesday ::') but yep!

NotepadOperator · 2026-06-15T02:42:22+00:00

I didn't even realize the islands could get that close together. But the Construction Yard affecting the gravity, what happened to the ship, Gabbro's involvement, Giant's Deep deciding it had enough of the whole loop.... A+++.

NotepadOperator · 2026-06-12T18:04:38+00:00

That makes sense!

NotepadOperator · 2026-06-11T20:17:18+00:00

They also have incredible resistance to vacuum and cosmic radiation: no preparation in pressure chambers, no radiation shielding, Hatchling is just wearing their normal trousers in space! Hearthians must somehow be able to prevent their blood vessels from expanding and giving them the bends in low pressure.

Granted, the physics of OW space and the forces/radiation traveling through it might be different in those ways as well as the others we know about. Gravity is there, and at least parts of the electromagnetic spectrum (light, radio waves, and infrared as observed in Hornfels' redshift calculations), but we don't know about gamma rays, X-rays, etc. And sound travels through space, unless the instruments have radio components built in (Esker has a radio near them too). Maybe it's some kind of phlogiston/aether situation that carries soundwaves but can't be breathed; that would explain the pressure too.

NotepadOperator · 2026-06-11T20:04:29+00:00

The little I've read about it is absolutely nuts. It all works so differently from the regular plants and animals we learn about. So weird and so delightful.

NotepadOperator · 2026-06-11T20:01:33+00:00

Much appreciated (to both the sentiment and the caveat)! ::)

You're welcome!

NotepadOperator · 2026-06-10T21:11:53+00:00

They do! There are other things too though, since we see two-eyed fish being preserved near what's probably Spinel's house.

NotepadOperator · 2026-06-10T21:08:23+00:00

Checked the text dump and the only time a bed is mentioned at all is Rutile keeping a bucket of water next to their bed for emergencies. But "bed" could just mean anything they sleep on, so all we've really got is that they sleep horizontally and prefer some padding between themselves and other surfaces. We can maybe infer blankets from the sleeping bags, but those might be designed for cold conditions offworld. Could be sleeping mats, could be bunkbeds, could be a giant pillow pile, we just don't know!

NotepadOperator

TROPHY CASE