Outer Wilds Access

Making Outer Wilds playable without sight.

Outer Wilds Access is a comprehensive accessibility mod that makes Outer Wilds playable for blind and visually impaired players using a screen reader (NVDA or JAWS). Every menu, dialogue, game event, and piece of alien writing is announced — and a full audio navigation system lets you explore planets, find your ship, and travel the solar system independently.

This mod was built from the ground up by a blind player, for blind players.

What This Mod Does

Screen Reader Integration

• Full vocalization of all menus (title, pause, options, popups) with button prompts
• Dialogue and NPC conversations announced as they appear
• Game state changes: death (with cause), respawn, suit, flashlight, landing, takeoff
• Nomai alien text read aloud instantly (no waiting for the translation animation)
• Ship log entries accessible from anywhere (F4)

Audio Navigation

• 6 scan categories: Ship, NPCs, Interactables, Nomai Texts, Locations, Signs
• Cycle through nearby objects with PageUp/PageDown
• Distance and direction announced on demand (End)
• Audio guidance: tonal cues that change pitch and speed based on your alignment with the target (G)
• Auto-walk: follows the A* pathfinding route to your target, with automatic obstacle avoidance and jump detection (B)
• Scout probe tracking: automatic announcements when your probe is launched, anchored, retrieved, or destroyed, plus on-demand status (O)

Piloting

• Ship autopilot to any planet or major body — 9 destinations validated against the game's reference frames (Home/PageUp/PageDown/End at the controls)
• Surface alignment on arrival — the ship auto-orients parallel to the planet's gravity so exiting the cockpit is easier
• Ship recall — teleport your ship to you anywhere (F3)
• Flight telemetry: speed, altitude, "landed on" / "near" body distinction, damage status (I)

Status & Awareness

• Personal status: health, oxygen, jetpack fuel, boost charge (H)
• Ship status: fuel, oxygen, hull integrity, component damage (J)
• Environment: hazards, gravity, water, dark matter (K)
• Detailed position: planet, sector, nearest named location (L)
• Loop timer: time remaining before the supernova (F2)
• Low resource alerts (automatic)
• Obstacle collision beeps while walking

Teleportation

• Warp to any selected navigation target on the same planet (T, max 500m)
• Why this exists: auto-walk and audio guidance work well in open terrain, but they have real limitations right now — the A* pathfinding cannot handle all obstacles (tight corridors, complex geometry, stacked areas), the camera alignment sweep doesn't always find interactables inside trigger volumes, and slopes above 45° are impassable. Teleportation is a workaround so you're never stuck. Once pathfinding and guidance are fully reliable, this feature will be reconsidered.

Quality of Life

• In-game settings menu to toggle each feature (F6)

• Bilingual: French and English, auto-detected from game language

• Meditation available from the start (no need to complete the first loop)

• Ghost matter protection (no instant death)

• Peaceful ghosts in the DLC (optional)

• Mod toggle (F5): completely disables the mod on the fly — no announcements, no sounds, no hotkeys. Press F5 again to re-enable. Useful when handing the game to a sighted player.

Controls

Press F1 in-game for the full interactive help menu. Here are the essentials:

General

• F1 — Help menu
• F2 — Loop timer
• F3 — Recall ship
• F4 — Ship log reader
• F5 — Disable/re-enable the mod (for handing the game to a sighted player)
• F6 — Accessibility settings
• F12 — Toggle debug mode (writes detailed logs to OuterWildsAccess.log.txt in the mod folder)
• Delete — Repeat last announcement
• Backspace — Mute/unmute audio beacon (out of menus) / Back (in menus)
• Escape — Close menus

Navigation (on foot)

• Home — Scan nearby objects
• PageUp / PageDown — Cycle through results
• Alt+PageUp / Alt+PageDown — Change category
• End — Distance and direction to target
• G — Toggle audio guidance
• B — Toggle auto-walk
• T — Teleport to selected target (same planet, max 500m, fallback when pathfinding fails)
• O — Scout probe status
• U — Signalscope status

Navigation (at ship controls)

• Home — Open destination list
• PageUp / PageDown — Cycle destinations
• End — Launch autopilot

Status

• H — Personal status (health, oxygen, jetpack, boost, suit)
• I — Flight telemetry (speed, altitude, landed/near body, damage)
• J — Ship status (fuel, oxygen, hull, components)
• K — Environment (hazards, gravity, water)
• L — Detailed position (planet, sub-sector, nearest landmark)

Requirements

• Outer Wilds (Steam or Epic Games)
• OWML 2.15.5+ (Outer Wilds Mod Loader)
• A screen reader: NVDA (recommended) or JAWS

Installation

1. Install OWML from outerwildsmods.com
2. Download the latest release
3. Extract the ZIP
4. Copy the OuterWildsAccess folder into your OWML\Mods\ directory
5. Copy Tolk.dll and nvdaControllerClient64.dll to the game root folder (next to OuterWilds.exe)
6. Launch the game via OWML
7. You should hear: "Outer Wilds Access loaded. F1 for help."

Important: Before You Explore

The Nomai Statue: After getting the launch codes, you must visit the Nomai statue in the observatory on Timber Hearth. Walk close to it and the statue will scan you automatically (your controls will lock for about 10 seconds during the sequence). This activates the time loop, which is the core mechanic of the game. Without this encounter, the loop will not start and the game cannot truly begin. The statue appears in the navigation scan (Home) under Interactables as "Nomai statue".

How saving works: Outer Wilds has no manual save. The game automatically saves your knowledge (ship log entries, discovered facts) at the end of each time loop — whether you die, the supernova goes off, or you meditate to skip the loop. Your physical progress (position, items) resets every loop, but everything you've learned is permanent. This is by design: the game is about accumulating knowledge, not checkpoints.

Known Limitations

• Auto-walk & pathfinding: the A* algorithm works on a 1m grid with 3D height propagation. It handles open terrain, slopes, and basic obstacles well, but struggles with tight indoor spaces, complex multi-level geometry, and areas where the walkable path isn't obvious from raycasts. Slopes above 45° are impassable. Ghost matter detection may come too late in some areas. When the path fails, use teleportation (T) as a fallback.
• Camera alignment: after auto-walk arrives at a target, the mod sweeps the camera pitch to find interactables. This works for raycast-based interactions (InteractReceiver) but not for trigger volumes (InteractZone), where you need to physically enter the zone. Some objects like the model rocket cannot be interacted with automatically.
• Tutorial: the game blocks NPC interactions until "Look around" and "Move" prompts are completed — follow the on-screen prompts first
• Autopilot: you must be seated at the ship controls before selecting a destination

Troubleshooting

• No announcements: make sure Tolk.dll is in the game root folder (not in the Mods folder)
• Mod not loading: check that OuterWildsAccess is enabled in the OWML Mod Manager
• Game crash: check the logs in OWML\Logs\ and open an issue

About

Created by PlatinumTsuki — a blind gamer who wanted to explore the solar system.

If you encounter bugs or have suggestions, please open an issue.