One of the first History Lessons posts I wrote for this blog was about Outcast, back before I even had screenshots in my posts. Spoiler alert: I loved it. It’s a wildly ambitious game that was way ahead of its time and still feels distinct from the modern games that eventually adopted many of its ideas. Later, I posted about a Kickstarter attempt by the original developers to fund an HD remake, in the hopes of eventually making a sequel. That Kickstater campaign failed, but the team went ahead and made the HD remake anyway. Titled Outcast: Second Contact, it’s available now on Steam, as well as PS4 and Xbox One (the original was PC-only).

As usual, I’m hopelessly behind and short on free time, so I haven’t had a chance to play it yet. In fact, I’ve started playing Outcast 1.1, an earlier update that the developers made to the original game to make it play nicer with modern computers and allow higher resolutions. I’m hoping to compare it directly to Second Contact so I can report on what’s changed, and which version you might prefer. So I’ll write about that… eventually. In the meantime, I wanted to announce Second Contact’s release in case any readers are interested. Many players, myself included, missed Outcast the first time around, so this is a great chance to discover a great game.