Cosy games are deceptively difficult to make. On paper they sound simple: low stakes, relaxing systems, gentle progression, and a soothing, comforting atmosphere. The line between “relaxing” and “tedious,” however, is incredibly thin. Without providing enough incentive or engaging interaction, cosy quickly becomes monotonous. Players still need something to pull them forward, even in titles designed around slowing down. Unfortunately, Outbound by Square Glade Games spends too much time on the wrong side of it.
There’s an undeniably appealing idea at the centre of Outbound. Abandoning the chaos of city life, climbing into a campervan, and disappearing into the wilderness is certainly attractive. Within the opening moments this captures that fantasy beautifully for a minute or two. The soft lighting, quiet forests and warm ambience create the impression of a thoughtful, calming road trip adventure. Sadly, it won’t take long for most to come upon the first problem, which is how easy the illusion falls apart.
Despite the beautiful scenery, players will soon get a weird sense that their character was simply dropped into a virtual, artificial, fake universe. A cheap film studio. There’s little history here, no NPCs to give it life, no nothing. There’s a lame excuse provided in the form of scattered notes that speak of a festival everyone has gone to, but that makes things even worse. You aren’t having an adventure; you just…exist, while others are having fun. This all undermines one of the core strengths of video games: the ability to become immersed in a made-up realm and forget, even briefly, that the whole thing isn’t real.
Outbound mostly plays as an open world cosy crafting game, where a hero(ine) of your making drives between various biomes gathering resources and then creating tools, expanding the van, and unlocking new upgrades. To do all that you’ll need blueprints, downloadable from various towers via a coupon, which in turn is the reward given for recycling litter. Oh, yeah, it all takes place in a distant eco-friendly utopia, so everything uses clean energy, chopping down trees is a big no-no, and animals are there to be admired and not hunted.
Anyways, the crafting systems themselves are approachable, with a simplicity that makes the whole thing easy to grasp. Base building is also a thing here, with the base being the van itself, since it is possible to turn it into a customisable (and monstrous) mobile home with plenty of freedom in how one can approach that. Unfortunately, almost everything surrounding crafting feels exhausting rather than relaxing…
For starters, movement in unbelievably, painfully sluggish. Running on foot quickly drains stamina, inventory space is tiny and becoming encumbered slows you to a crawl. Nightfall comes relatively fast, and then running becomes unavailable because the character is tired, forcing you to send him to bed. What a bold and daring explorer you are in control of! The crazy thing is that the campervan itself somehow feels even slower. You’ll spend an enormous amount of time driving at a glacial pace, stopping every 10 meters or so to gather more materials simply to keep the vehicle (and yourself) running.
Have you played the developer’s previous title, Above Snakes? Much like it, Outbound includes a light (even lighter this time around) survival aspect in the form of a hunger meter and, as mentioned earlier, the main character needs some shuteye. The problem is that, like Above Snakes, it all turns into a repetitive cycle of making a few steps, collecting a small number of resources, returning back to base, and repeating the – boring – process endlessly, with it all feeling the same from start to finish, as the progression is heavily padded by constant material collection, with upgrades lacking any sort of satisfying payoff. You gather stuff to create more stuff, opening the way to more stuff that can be gathered, which can then…oof. You get the idea.
Never forget the first issue mentioned: the world is almost post-apocalyptically devoid of life. How do you make such a place even more lifeless? Why, by having you search for useless junk! Now, while this critic isn’t really into collectathons, there’s a correct and a wrong way to make one. The satisfaction in a good collectathon stems from a kind of struggle, like having collectibles cleverly hidden, or by forcing one to overcome obstacles to get them through skill and mastery. Not here. There are about 400 things to “discover,” like gnomes, cairns, campsites, etc, but it is as exciting as walking around a house and picking up things from the shelves.
All issues mentioned so far combine to lead to the one thing that ultimately kills any semblance of fun. It’s not the snail pacing, it’s not the zero amount of difficulty (besides remaining awake), it’s not even the tedium involved. Ultimately the biggest problem with Outbound is simply the fact that there’s little reason to care about doing any of the things you are asked to. When the player constantly questions why they keep on trying to do this or that, then they aren’t playing a video game, they are working.
Outbound seems to rely entirely on you creating your own motivation, which, frankly, is almost impossible when, an hour in, it becomes crystal clear that what’s on offer is one hour of content stretched over 15-20 hours. It’s frustrating because the core concept is genuinely strong. A relaxing campervan sim should be an easy win in the world of cosy games. Sadly, even before hitting the three-hour mark, it struggles to justify its own loop.
In the end, this fails not as a game of crafting, camping, survival, exploration, base building, driving, or whatever you wanna call it. It fails as a piece of software that is meant to help you sit back and relax. Outbound wants to be a peaceful escape from modern life, but instead it feels like another routine. One that carries a price tag that’s insultingly high.
Never heard of it before, interesting. Are you going to review Phonopolis?