Outbound PC Review

Gameplay

Graphics

Audio

Value

Summary: Hit the road in your eco friendly van, build it into your dream cozy home and live off the land.

3.6

Enjoyable Environmentalism

Outbound has a lovely premise, live in an eco-friendly van home and live sustainably off-grid (with up to 4 players).

You start by making your character, though to be honest the options are very slim. You can choose from a few different vans with slightly different performance profiles (e.g. larger weight capacity or greater engine power). Then you are off. You are free to explore and gather resources (and you should really gather all the resources you can, all the time… your backpack can only hold so much, but your van seems to have near‑infinite storage). You will find litter scattered around some locations, and you can collect it and put it in a recycler that turns it into vouchers you can use to download more blueprints. Occasionally you will come across a “landmark” — something that might require you to fix something or interact with it in some way to restore its use. Once you have sorted these out, you can go on to the next map. There are four maps, and technically you can avoid solving all the big areas on a map before going to the next one, but you will have to clear the path to the next map, which might mean upgrading a tool to enable you to clear space or finding resources to get something working again.

The van home is an interesting thing… it completely ignores physics and essentially you can build a multi-storied home on your van (limited by weight but you can upgrade just how much you can stack on top of your van as you go on… to a certain limit). You can then furnish this home space how you like and set up all the tools/machines you need to process what you find in the world to make new useful items.

But before you can build new items, you need the blueprints, which means recycling waste and exchanging that at towers. This sounds like a clever mechanic (and a great way to encourage players to recycle)… except it isn’t quite as simple as that. After the first few blueprints, you only get new options when you find new towers, and when the game decides a new blueprint is available — but only from a certain tower on the map (and frequently one on the opposite side to where you are). There are two main problems I have with this. One is that there’s not much point in continually being able to generate tokens for towers to unlock new blueprints if they are drip‑fed anyway. It makes the litter recycling feel arbitrary (certainly by the later parts of the game you are unlikely to be low on tokens thanks to the ratio of rubbish you encounter to how often a new blueprint is available). The second issue is that there is no quick travel. I understand part of the “charm” of the game is the driving around the maps, but when you get a ping that a tower on the opposite side of the map has arbitrarily decided to provide a new blueprint (especially if you know you need a new tool to advance), it’s quite annoying to have to make your way over the winding roads to get to it. I would have thought each of the campsites you can mark by starting a fire in them could be used as unlocked fast‑travel points… but it seems not (or I missed some note explaining how to use them).

Final Thoughts

For the most part this is a cosy laid back game. There’s no real threat in it (you can get injured but even falling from a decent height is unlikely to kill you… you have to try really hard to do any real damage). I love the idea of being able to use renewable resources, sun, wind, rain etc. The recycling mechanic could have been better implemented and fast travel would be a welcome addition… but overall it’s a decent bit of fun and you can even adopt a dog (though once you do… it’s with you for the rest of the game… even if you tell it to stay somewhere, it will inevitably end up by your side again).

Good for those who like gentle gaming.

About the Author

Chris O'Connor Father of four, husband of one and all round oddity. Gaming at home since about 1982 with a Sinclair ZX Spectrum. Moving on to the more traditional PC genre in the years that followed with the classic Jump Joe and Alley Cat. CGA, EGA, VGA and beyond PC's have been central to my gaming but I've also enjoyed consoles and hand helds along the way (who remembers the Atari Lynx?). Would have been actor/film maker, jack of many trades master of none.

Outbound PC Review