Outbound Review

I love taking road trips, or at least used to. Back when petrol was affordable, I hopped in my truck almost every weekend and hit the road with only a vague idea of where I’d wind up by the end of the day. And I always enjoyed my journey more than my destination. Stopping at random historical markers, finding an obscure restaurant to eat at, and occasionally pulling over to take a picture was why I burned gasoline as often as I could. However, it currently costs me almost an entire day’s wages to fill up the tank on my pickup. So I’ve had to turn to video games to virtually recreate what used to be one of my favourite pastimes. 

Outbound does an amazing job at that, for better and worse. The game almost perfectly simulates what it’s like to go on a carefree trip across a beautiful landscape. The problem is that it also simulates the annoyances of spending a day in your vehicle, like performing maintenance and the occasional need to eat crummy food. Outbound ultimately succeeds at what it sets out to do, but fails to become something most players will actually want to buy.

Depending on which way you look at it, Outbound’s gameplay is either entirely too complex or not complex enough. After a quick tutorial, you’re set loose in the title’s giant first map with the vague goal of getting to the next one. How you do that is largely up to you, but regardless of which roads you take, you can expect to do the same things you do in other survival-lites. Your primary mode of transportation is a camper van that doubles as a mobile base, and you have to keep its battery charged with wood or solar power. You also have to upgrade its engine, build crafting tables so you can make a pick axe/axe/hiking boots, and scavenge food from the environment.

None of that is remotely engaging. If you’ve played Minecraft, or one of the countless games that were inspired by it, it’ll only take you a few minutes to master Outbound’s mechanics. Once you do, you’ll learn that there’s no real depth to them, or the game as a whole. You drive around the map stopping at points of interest to hoover up resources, then use those resources so you can keep moving. Occasionally you’ll have to navigate a bit of difficult terrain or solve a straightforward logic puzzle, but that’s it.

While technically, you can build a giant base atop your van, or play with a few of your mates in an online mode, you’re never given any reason to. Outbound is not a difficult game, and almost everything you do is self-driven. If you’re the type of player who needs quest markers to get your dopamine fix, you’ll quickly get bored. You can see all four of the game’s maps in a handful of hours, and visit all the notable landmarks in a similar amount of time. There are no mechanics here that push you to do anything beyond the bare minimum.

Instead, just like during a real life road trip, you have to want to drive around solely for the sake of it. Outbound’s visuals are absolutely gorgeous, and its musical score is equally fantastic. Whenever you pull over to take a screenshot, start a virtual campfire, or fuel up your vehicle, the game’s vibes are immaculate. But, again, it’s up to you to find those memorable moments, because the game rarely tells you where they are.

There’s nothing wrong with that. It’s Outbound’s main mechanics that are the problem. Keeping your character fed and your van’s tank filled up are annoyances that detract from the overall experience instead of adding to it in any meaningful way. The survival-lite elements aren’t complex enough to be engaging, yet they’re still intrusive enough to stop the game from ever becoming properly relaxing. In spite of Outbound’s great audiovisual design, the title simultaneously does too little and too much to keep you playing. Outbound captures the essence of a real road trip almost perfectly, including the parts that make you wish you’d stayed home.