It was launched on 2012 at Kongregate and Facebook, as well as for iOS and Android. However, it was ultimately shut down in 2016, as by that point the player count could not "keep up with the ongoing server costs".
Tropes appearing in Outernauts:
- Action Initiative: The Speed stat determines who goes first, though certain moves may preempt the order, and items are used before any attacks are made.
- Alien Sky: There are many planets and moons visible in the background.
- Always Check Behind the Chair: Most of the plants are simply for environmental flavor, but tufts of thick grass should be dug up in search of items and money.
- Amazing Technicolor Wildlife: They can come in shades of brilliant yellow, neon blue, or hot pink.
- Animal-Eared Headband: You can get a Pumaflar-themed helmet that includes long, flaming yellow-orange ears.
- Attack! Attack! Attack!: The description of Major Stache's hunting gloves:
- Screw defense! In Major Stache's book, the best offense is a high Attack and not looking back!
- Ax-Crazy: Lex and Gorm, the bosses of sector 2.
- Badass Adorable: Many of the creatures. There's even an item that allows them to keep their baby or teenage appearances while retaining the stats of their full evolutions, so you don't have to choose between "Cute as a Button" and "Hits Like a Truck."
- Bag of Holding: You may carry around as many items as you wish, no matter their size. Possibly justified with you teleporting the items to a storage location, rather than actually keeping them on your person.
- Batman Can Breathe in Space: You and all your minions and pretty much every other character are all perfectly capable of trotting around helmetless on chunks of rock far too small to sustain a breathable atmosphere.
- Battle Theme Music: The game is normally pretty quiet, with just a few whistles of wind and other background sounds, with the occasional tune lilting about. The usual up-tempo music kicks in when a battle starts, however, and a short burst of music may play on the quest screen as well.
- Big Bad: Axel Sludge, the head of Sludge Co.
- Color-Coded Stones: Each Mon has a "Stone Type" that determines which of its stats are higher or lower than its base type. You can change a creature's stone type if you have the funds.
- Com Mons: Many of the early beasts, such as Hortabud, are incredibly common. There's also the Common type, but that element does contain some rarer beasties as well.
- Cool Helmet: You can buy helmets for your Virtual Paper Doll. Most of them will help at least one type of your Mons.
- Cutting the Knot: Phantasm Bombs let you dispense with the finesse of shovels, axes, and hammers (for dirt, trees, and rocks, naturally) and just blow it all up!
- Death Is a Slap on the Wrist: Losing a battle sends you back to your Homeworld to heal up, either with items or by waiting several minutes. Losing to another player will take some of your rank points and a few coins, but still imposes a very, very light penalty.
- Egopolis: Electra asks if you're going to name your Homeworld [[Your Name]]-topia or [[Your Name]]-opolis, then suggests Electra City.
- Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors: There are thirteen types of creatures:
- Everything's Cuter with Kittens: One of your starter choices is a small yellow cat called Pumaflar. It may remind you of Ratchet on fire.
- Exactly What It Says on the Tin:
- Many of the Mons have Punny Names that sound exactly like what they are.
- Major Stache has a large mustache.
- Guess the climate of Burning Tundra. Go on, guess.
- Fantastic Fruits and Vegetables: The Healing Herbs range from fairly mundane to downright wacky.
- Final Boss Preview: Used at times as you will often fight the boss of a sector once while they are using weaker beasts and then again at the end when they have stronger ones.
- Flavor Text: A Pokédex-type journal allows you to track the various Mons you've encountered, as well as giving you a few lines of description once you catch them.
- Fluffy Tamer: Major Stache has several large, grumpy-looking Mons on his homeworld with names like Puddin', Scrumples, and Cutie-Pie.
-
Follow the Leader: Yet another online Pokémon spoof. It's getting hard to tell if they're following Pokémon itself or following the followers.
- Gentleman Adventurer: Major Stache has the makings of one, if you transported him out of Darkest Africa and into deep space.
- Glass Cannon: Some of the Mons are built around the type. Pumaflar's Flavor Text even notes that it has strong offensive capabilities and high speed, but lacks durability.
- Gotta Catch 'Em All:
- The Mons, naturally.
- The 25 members of the Moonhead Cult, hidden around the galaxy.
- Green Aesop: The Big Bad Mega-Corp is called Sludge Co, and Lily the Lunakin asks you to catch specimens of several beasts so you can save the species from extinction at their hands.
- Hailfire Peaks: Burning Tundra
- Healing Herb: Various plants and juices derived from them are used to restore your Mons. The most basic Sol Berries bear a strong resemblance to goji berries
, notable for actually being really good for you but also simultaneously overhyped by the natural health products industry. - Hello, [Insert Name Here]: Averted; you'll be addressed by whatever name you're known as on the site (likely your first name on Facebook, but a screen name on Kongregate).
- Incompetence, Inc.: Most of Sludge Co.'s employees don't seem particularly loyal once you beat their team of Mons and spend more time complaining about their jobs than actually doing them.
- Injured Vulnerability: You'll have to weaken Mons to catch them in a Gravity Orb.
- An Interior Designer Is You: You have the option to purchase and place various items on your Homeworld. Some are useful (Beast Feeders allow you to catch more Mons, for example), but others are purely decorative.
- Killer Rabbit: A properly-leveled Ridiculously Cute Critter naturally becomes one of these. Pumaflar's journal entry even notes that it's fierce but deceptively sweet-looking.
- Leaked Experience: Your entire party gains experience, though those who actually participate in battle gain more. Mons not in the active party do not gain experience.
- Limited Move Arsenal: Mons start out with only four move slots open, though you can open four more for a total of eight. Moves can be switched in and out of slots between battles for a small fee, though, so forgetting one move to learn another isn't so bad.
- Majorly Awesome: Major Stache.
- Mega-Corp: Sludge Co.
- Mission Control: Electra is MC for several Outernauts, including the player. She first sends you to investigate why her others went missing.
- Mons: They don't appear to have a set term for them, though "beasts" seems to be the most common; various characters refer to them as pets or other names, and even a single character may not have a favorite word for your exotic battling companions.
- Named by Democracy: Major Stache, whose real name is Griffith P. Moriarty. He doesn't know why everyone keeps calling him that, but it doesn't really seem to bother him too much.
- Not-Actually-Cosmetic Award: Skill Points. Though largely cosmetic, you can earn Star Gems (premium currency) by completing them, which you can then use to purchase useful items (or entirely Cosmetic Awards, like funky suits).
- Planimal: Some of the Mons, such as Hortabug (a caterpillar with a leaf on its head that is actually just a Common-type) or Cactinee (a cactus/bird hybrid, but it's only Flora-type, not Flying-type).
- Party in My Pocket: Apparently, Mons stay in their Gravity Orbs when not in battle or hanging out on your Homeworld.
- Pun: In typical Insomniac fashion, the humor is quite witty.
- Hurricane of Puns
- Pungeon Master: Electra.
- Punny Name
- Precision F-Strike: Most of the language is quite tame, but occasionally characters drop a word you wouldn't normally hear in a kid-friendly series.
- Pronoun Trouble: Major Stache says "There they is!" instead of "There he/she is!" in reference to the player character, avoiding having two lines of dialogue for each gender (though the grammatically correct thing to say in that situation would have been the gender-neutral "There you are!", as he was speaking to the player, not about them).
- Recycled IN SPACE!: Pokémon IN SPACE!
- Ridiculously Cute Critter: Many of the Mons, particularly their first forms.
- Rule of Cool: Probably the only reason you and your Mons can waltz around on small chunks of rock in space without a helmet (or with a helmet that doesn't cover your nose and mouth).
- Scissors Cuts Rock: Any sufficiently-leveled Mon is more than a match for any Mons which may have a type advantage against it (unless of course it only knows attacks of one element and the opponent is completely immune to it).
- Self-Deprecation: The Moonhead Cult, a group of ex-game developers who escape from the mental institution on Burbankalos-9.Explain the joke
- Shout-Out: Many to ''Pokémon, of course, such as the achievement "To Train Them Is Your Cause".
- One of the quests is called Harvest Moon and tasks you to harvest grass like a farmer.
- Lava Plants are said to grow in the fires of Hordor.
- The move Volkun Pinch pinches the target "in a highly logical and perhaps even fascinating manner" with a chance to put them to sleep.
- Socialization Bonus: Build a dojo and other players can help train your Mons for you.
- Status Quo Is God:
- Jon the Giant: "...you can't go around destroying the status quo just because the status is not...quo."
- Stuff Blowing Up: You can either bother with finding the correct tool (shovel, pickaxe, hammer) to deal with a certain obstacle, or just blow it up.
- Symbol Swearing: Major Stache's description of a statue of himself: "An intergalactic symbol of peace, love, and Sludge Co should stay the #@$% away!"
- Teleporters and Transporters: A quick way to zip back and forth between various areas of the planet that you've already visited. They look a bit like helicopter landing pads.
- There Are Two Kinds of People in the World: Dice believes there are only two types of trainers: those who win, and those who are losers.
- Took a Level in Badass: Evolving Mons tend to take a level or two.
- Virtual Paper Doll: Choose for your avatar to be male or female, select skin and hair colors, and equip various suits.
- World in the Sky: Apparently the norm in this part of the universe. You get coordinates for "planets" which look like planets on the star map, but constantly end up walking around on Floating Continents with an Alien Sky visible both above and below where you actually are.
