Out of Bounds (OOB)

This category is about the "levels outside the levels" in Journey.

What is it?
There is an Out of Bounds (OOB) area for every level of Journey.

The OOB areas are bigger than the normal level and contain beautiful scenery, unexpected dangers, weird objects, rendering glitches and other surprises. The game's art style makes OOB exploration a dream-like experience which many players enjoy.

To be able to reach most out of bounds areas you will sometimes need advanced techniques such as Fancy Flying, though most OOBs are reachable rather easy, especially with a helping Companion.

Those areas were not supposed to be accessible to players, but various exploits and techniques lead to their discovery which opened an entirely new dimension of Journey exploration.

General OOB terms
This is a list of things and effects you can find in some or all OOBs.


 * Breaking the Shrine/HL - Changing the meditation circle appearance/functionality
 * Black Sky - Places where sky and fog turns black, found so far in CS, BB, PD and SC
 * Blackness - Zones on the North and South where light is no longer working. The screen becomes black. Check out this article for further details and hints on dealing with Blackness.
 * Crash Zones - Do not exist in PS3. An invisible square on the southwest corner of every map. Makes one's game crash.
 * Disco Zones and other Disco Stuff Areas, Wayfarer or a War Machine can be "disco", this means quickly changing colors.
 * HL Board - The history lesson scroll suspended OOB, known to be in CS, BB, PD, SC and UG levels.
 * Ink Painting - Confirmed on PS4; does not exist on PS3. Occurs at the edge of blackness outside the Sky box. By going in and out of blackness one can create black patterns on their screen.
 * Invisible Ledge - An invisible surface that a player can stand on.
 * Level Cube / Sky Box - Confirmed on PS4 and PC; does not exist on PS3. A sky/lighting cube in which every level is placed. It becomes visible from some OOB places outside the box.
 * Peeling_Grounds_and_Sanded_Wayfarer - Places in OOB where the sand or snow surface becomes non-solid and permits one to slip "under the sand". Sanded Appearance, when the Wayfarer turns to the color of the sand, or a color derived from it.
 * Sky Painting - Confirmed on PS4; does not exist on PS3 or PC. Areas outside the Sky box, where any movement gets suspended on the sky for a moment as a still imagery.
 * Starfields - Areas on the east, west, south, sometimes north sides of almost every map. Has rainbow particles suspended in air and on the invisible sand.

OOB articles by level
Detailed information about OOB areas, glitches, interesting sights etc. for each level are kept in separate articles for each level. Those are linked below.

Every OOB level is as unique as the actual levels in Journey. Each one has some specials that might be only in this OOB level or most prominent in that level.

Some examples:

Starfields appear in every OOB level, but the effect is the strongest in the Underground (might be also because of the dark colors make color dots appear "stronger").

Nick can be found only in the Chapter Select OOB and Sky Painting is only possible on PS4.


 * Some people will enjoy exploring and finding out about nice places to visit and dangers (places to get stuck, Blackness, wind pushes you in the wrong direction), by themselves or with the help of a Companion.


 * For researching and more information the Category:Maps will be helpful.


 * Chapter Select (OOB)
 * Broken Bridge (OOB)
 * Pink Desert (OOB)
 * Sunken City (OOB)
 * Underground (OOB)
 * Tower (OOB)
 * Snow (OOB)
 * Paradise (OOB)

Connecting with companions OOB
Notes from Alex:

"It is possible to connect OOB, and it's also possible to connect to someone in-level after you've been OOB. That said, it can mess with things. If you start start triggering things out of order, like activating a war machine and eventually going back to the beginning to wait for a companion, you can only connect to people who have the same WM active, but not other events that you skipped, and be waiting for you at the right spot

''so... it can make the possibilities that you'll connect with a random pretty small, and for a planned meeting, it may be hard and as a fair warning, there are some triggers that prevent you from connecting at all. Like in UG, when you pass the WM in the ambush room, you will no longer be able to connect to anyone. and it's easy to hit triggers like that when goofing off out of bounds and not realize it"''

Trivia

 * The "backdrop" showing the mountain in the distance and level-specific elements such as city line in Sunken City, is actually not part of the level geometry; it consists of multiple "layers", usually four, which form a cylindrical surface around the Wayfarer's point of view, using parallax effect between layers to give it the perception of depth. As such the backdrop artwork is always at a given distance from the Wayfarer, and is not reachable out-of-bounds; in certain remote areas it may even appear in front of other level elements due to clipping.
 * Although the backdrop "ring" moves with the Wayfarer, it never rotates and can therefore be used for navigation even if no level geometry is visible (you'd have to have a rough idea where the level is though).

Quotes
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