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Alex Beachum, creative director of Outer Wilds

Outer Wilds is a 2019 action-adventure video game developed by Mobius Digital and published by Annapurna Interactive. The game follows the player character as they explore a planetary system stuck in a 22-minute time loop that resets after the sun goes supernova and destroys the system. Through repeated attempts they investigate alien ruins to discover their history and the cause of the time loop. The game began development in 2012 as the master's thesis of director Alex Beachum (pictured), and became a commercial project in 2015. It was released for Windows, the Xbox One, and the PlayStation 4 in 2019, for the PlayStation 5 and the Xbox Series X/S in 2022, and for the Nintendo Switch in 2023. It was positively received, with most critics acclaiming its design and some criticizing the uneven difficulty of gameplay and pursuing the game's mysteries. An expansion, Echoes of the Eye, was released in 2021. Outer Wilds won in multiple categories at award shows, including Best Game at the 16th British Academy Games Awards. (Full article...)

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Did you know ...

John S. McCain Sr. (left) and John S. McCain Jr.

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... that the character Dogpool was portrayed by "Britain's ugliest dog"?

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Kasia Niewiadoma

In cycling, Katarzyna Niewiadoma (pictured) wins the Tour de France Femmes.
Paetongtarn Shinawatra becomes Prime Minister of Thailand after Srettha Thavisin is dismissed by the Constitutional Court.
The World Health Organization declares the mpox epidemic to be a global health emergency.
Voepass Linhas Aéreas Flight 2283 crashes in the Brazilian state of São Paulo, killing all 62 people on board.

On this day

August 20

Pluto

917 – Byzantine–Bulgarian wars: Bulgarian forces led by Tsar Simeon I drove the Byzantines out of Thrace with a decisive victory at the Battle of Achelous.
1892 – Celtic Park, the largest football stadium in Scotland and home of Celtic F.C., opened.
1909 – Pluto (pictured) was photographed for the first time at the Yerkes Observatory in Williams Bay, Wisconsin, U.S., 21 years before it was officially discovered by Clyde Tombaugh.
1988 – The Troubles: The Provisional Irish Republican Army bombed a bus carrying British Army soldiers in Northern Ireland, killing eight of them and wounding twenty-eight.
1989 – After colliding with the dredger Bowbelle on the River Thames in London, the pleasure boat Marchioness sank in thirty seconds, killing 51 people.

James Prinsep (b. 1799)
Rudolf Bultmann (b. 1884)
Agnes Giberne (d. 1939)
Amy Adams (b. 1974)

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Today's featured picture

The Hoher Göll is a mountain in the Berchtesgaden Alps. At 2,522 metres (8,274 feet), it is the highest peak of the Göll massif, which straddles the border between the German state of Bavaria and the Austrian state of Salzburg. This photograph shows the Hoher Göll (left) and the Hohes Brett (right) from the west.

Photograph credit: Jörg Braukmamm

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