| Outbound | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Release Date | Gameplay & Story | Pre-Order & DLC | Review |
Overview
What is Outbound?
Outbound is a cozy open-world exploration game where players travel across the land in their trusty camper van. Set in a utopian future, explore a colorful world in an electric-powered van either solo or with friends, gathering materials and crafting all sorts of gadgets and furniture to create the perfect on-the-go moving base while progressing through bigger and better recipes.
For more gameplay details, read everything we know about Outbound’s gameplay and story.
Outbound features:
⚫︎ A Customizable Camper Van
⚫︎ A Vast Semi-Open World To Discover
⚫︎ Several Maps With Unique Recipes and Items
⚫︎ Slow Paced, Relaxed Gameplay
⚫︎ No Threats, Just Vibes
⚫︎ The Best Dog Buddy!
| Digital Storefronts | ||
|---|---|---|
 Steam |
 Epic |
 Xbox |
 Switch |
 Switch 2 |
 Playstation |
| $24.99 | ||
Outbound Review: Beautiful But Aimless
Cruising Through The Camper Van Life
Outbound is one such game I’ve been waiting for since its initial reveal. That’s because I love exploration games in general, and I had an absolute blast playing with my friends in Raft. Why Raft? The bright, rather cartoonish aesthetic of it all and the idea of building something on a moving vessel really reminded me of the seafaring castaway simulator. I played Raft from start to finish, and I fondly remember enjoying my time, whether it was in co-op or even in solo mode.
And thus, I looked forward to Outbound. It was supposed to let me live my Raft-like comfy van dreams, only much more relaxing (I still have nightmares about Raft’s Bruce). Did it live up to my expectations? Somewhat. It’s not the new land-based Raft I was kind of hoping for, but it might still be worth a shot, especially for those who are more into cozy, slow-paced, exploration, and building-focused games.
However, a fair warning to manage your expectations—this will definitely not be everyone’s cup of tea, even for the cozy game enthusiasts.
To Infinity And Outbound
You play as a citizen from a city in the near-utopian future who seems to have grown tired of urban life and decided to up and jumpstart an adventure with only you and your camper van. The short prologue begins with you already in your shiny new van, on the road to wherever adventure awaits. No solid backstory or lore or anything—that’s the entire premise.
What can be a hit or a miss depending on how much you like your worldbuilding is the sheer emptiness of it all. The world you step into outside of your urban dwelling has bits and pieces of having lived humans in every landmark, house, or greenhouse you end up in—a little note from the owner, maybe some free food and coffee to take, or a small side quest such as repairing the farm machines to get some crops for yourself. But you never see them, not once. It’s a decently vast and beautiful world, but it’s entirely empty and devoid of actual people.
You don’t feel connected enough to the people in these notes because once you finish their part, it’s…it’s just done. Another check on the bucket list (quite literally too, since quests come up in the upper right in a checklist format), then move on. These notes don’t even really describe or give more information about the landmark they’re from, which feels like the game can definitely stand on its own even without these notes. It's a little saddening for a game that puts exploration as its focus.
Explore, Gather, Build, And Do It All Over Again
Outbound is a cozy exploration game where venturing into the great outdoors goes hand in hand with crafting and progression. You drive around the game’s semi-open world in your camper van, discovering new landmarks and campfires to note, resources to gather, and new recipes to craft through signal stations, as well as finding little collectibles like Gnomes, Cairns, and Paintings scattered around. It’s a game of completion, ticking away at the objectives and tasks on the upper right of the screen, with a bit of customization in the form of base-building.
You complete these objectives and progress through the machine trees, unlocking more appliances and crafting recipes as you go through the game. These take a bit of time and effort to do, which means you’ll be staying in one map for quite some time before moving on to the next.
It’s honestly a numbing gameplay loop that I enjoy—gather materials, drive around, build and process things, then move on to the next area or move on to the next quest. It’s routine, and it does it well. There are no threats, no fear of screwing up, or having something destroy your life’s hard work (I’m looking at you, Bruce) either. It embodies the very notion of cozy—no consequences, no stress (supposedly), no need to one-up anyone else, and just playing the way you want to.
But that no consequence, no stress levels of coziness can be a double-edged sword. For one thing, there’s nothing threatening you to save scum or tear your hair out. Yet, there’s also…nothing to motivate. There could have been a story, but as I said before, it falls flat and feels barely like anything to keep you moving towards completion.
You can do all these solo or with friends, up to three other players. Luckily, I was able to rope in a friend for a whirl on my camper van, and the multiplayer aspect surely made it much easier to deal with everything. It’s not impossible solo, but as they say, the more, the merrier.
A Game Of Exploration With Many Limitations
Before that, for a game that’s all about exploration, there are a few frustrating limitations that can sour the experience by a bit. Firstly, no matter what you’re doing, come nightfall, you’re suddenly too tired to run. No exceptions—sprinting is disabled once the moon rises.
You can still kind of explore freely at night, but you’re now handicapped by the sluggish default walking speed. I don’t mind not having a flashlight (an odd choice considering you’re technically "camping" but I digress) since most of the area is still illuminated by the moon, but not being able to properly explore? Granted, this may be the best time to build your camper van base, but again, reeling back to the problem of gathering resources, it won’t be long until you’re out of wood. It proves to be a big hurdle to overcome.
But even when it’s not nighttime, the normal walking pace feels a bit frustrating in a game with wide areas to explore. I’d love to slow down and take in the sights, but when the sights also feel empty…then it’s not really a great stroll to do.
Secondly, resource limitations are rather silly. Why can’t I light up campfires with any type of wood? I have all this Silverbark Wood and for what—it can’t light up my campfires! It’s such a silly restriction for a game that has you trying to find 80 of these camps, and they don’t get marked as "found" until they’re lit. This was particularly a bit frustrating when I got to the second map, when Redwood was a little harder to come by early. I think I skipped over about four campfires, two of which were deep into a trail.
All These Uncuttable Trees
This limitation deserves its own section. I found it a little strange that you are fully armed with tools such as an axe, a pickaxe, and a scythe, but you can’t just extract resources freely as you would in other exploration-survival-esque games. You can only gather the scrap resources from the ground. This is most evident with gathering wood, specifically Everwood, which you need quite a lot of in the early game. Honestly, this wouldn’t be much of a problem—if there were just more of these darned resource nodes around.
You have dozens of trees around you—everywhere you look, there’s a tree. But you can’t cut it down yourself. All this wood is around, and you can’t even get a proper piece of it. You can only collect timber from already fallen logs, which are plentiful…although scattered. Wood collecting is quite tedious—grab all logs in a given area, hop back onto your van, look for the next area, and rinse and repeat. It doesn’t help that some bridge-repairing quests require a decently large amount of wood or wooden planks, making it a need to go through frequent trips back and forth.
Building and progressing can also be quite a hassle considering how much Everwood you need all the darn time. There will never be an area where there is enough wood to satisfy the needs of your machines or your building streak—you will always need to look around for more.
Needs Several QoL Improvements
It would benefit from several quality-of-life improvements to make the whole process less frustrating to deal with. For instance, a fast travel option to return to certain spots on the map. When encountering signal towers, you only get to learn one out of three recipes flashed on their screens. Although they refresh their downloads for recipes every now and then, allowing you to learn whatever you missed the first time. However, what’s annoying is that it forces you to lumber back all the way to that spot on the map just for completion.
Driving through endlessly in a picturesque world is fun in itself, but having to do this loop multiple times until you complete all the recipes in one map (each new area or map has their own unique set of recipes to learn) can get tiring pretty quickly after the fourth or fifth. A fast travel point to at least cut some of that time could help out a lot, especially for completionists.
And it’s not only for the signal towers—it’s for general exploration. You will find yourself trekking back and forth between areas sometimes because of certain resources only found in a specific area, which is a daunting task if you have to do it over and over again.
Building Is Fun
For one thing, though, one gameplay mechanic I found myself having a blast with was the base-building. The sky (and the weight restriction of the car) seems to be the limit here. There is no balancing act or strict physics or anything here like in Valheim or other games; if it connects and it doesn’t stress the car’s weight limit, then you can keep going.
Extend it all the way to the right, all the way to the left, or all the way up top—everything snaps together well in a proper grid, allowing for ease of customization. More building recipes are unlocked as you go through the game and unlock better resources and refined materials. So far, I’ve yet to make a two-story base, but I’ve seen others go as high as three stories, which will eventually be my goal.
The only caveat of it is that it requires a decent amount of resources, especially wood, which can come across as some of the hardest resources to acquire in consistent numbers.
Bright, Charming Visuals
Despite all that, though, the game is quite gorgeous to look at, which is always a plus in a cozy game. Coziness isn’t just for gameplay—it’s also coziness for the eyes, which Outbound manages to showcase. Even if most of its world is just fields, forests, oceans, and whatnot, it makes for a picturesque view no matter where you are in the game.
It’s also great that the game knows it looks nice, as it has a dedicated screenshot mode accessible through the in-game menu that gets rid of the UI for a bit as you walk around so it really immerses you into their world.
Is Outbound Worth It?
Maybe Wait For A Moment Longer
Outbound is a decent game at its core. It delivers what it markets itself to be—a cozy, (semi) open-world exploration game with building, crafting, and even farming elements. However, while it's got its basics down pat, the overall gameplay loop might end up becoming too taxing to be cozy, with all the trekking back and forth, the lack of resource nodes, and many more.
Right now, it feels like a good game for a certain subset of cozy gamers, those who really like taking it extra (extra) slow. But for the general public who may want something a little more in their blend of cozy, maybe wait for a little while longer to let it cook.
Nevertheless, despite saying that, I found myself enjoying most of it. Just…probably not for hours on end. I’ll come back to Outbound and its sprawling world…eventually.
| Digital Storefronts | ||
|---|---|---|
| Steam |
Epic |
Xbox |
| Switch |
Switch 2 |
Playstation |
| $24.99 | ||
FAQ
Is Outbound available for mobile devices?
No, Outbound is only available to play on Steam, Epic Games Store, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo Switch, and Nintendo Switch 2.
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