Outbound Review – Glamping on Hard Mode

Outbound Review

Open-world survival games come in all shapes and colors. Some are intense knuckle-biters that make every sunrise feel like sweet victory. Others, like Outbound, prefer a more relaxed approach. I’d rather be chilled out than balding with stress any day of the week. But is it possible for a survival game to be too relaxed? Kind of! That really depends on what fills each day. There’s always something that needs doing in this game, but even so, I found myself occasionally wanting more. To be fair, I had a lot of fun in this souped-up camper van. But the groove of routine was worn smooth with almost alarming speed.

You’re the owner of an extremely slick camper van, trundling around the natural world. Everything you need can be picked up and shoveled into your ride. Food, fuel, and building supplies are all waiting for the harvest. And you will need a lot of fuel. Turning logs into electricity is rad, but you need so many of them to keep the van moving. You, the human, need topping up less frequently than this vehicle. Thankfully, the required supplies are absolutely everywhere.

Kick the Tires and Light the Fires

So why are you out here in the middle of nowhere? It’s not immediately apparent, to be honest. You’re tasked with lighting your first campfire. Once you do so, you find out there are 79 more to find out there. You’ve also got gnomes to track down, blueprints to unlock, and tech trees to fill out. Plus, there’s a whole countryside to explore. But you’re a little short on tangible long-term goals. I’m pretty happy just puttering around and slowly building out my home base, but other players might need more direction.

To that end, Outbound is full of smaller short-term goals to achieve. Your various tech trees will take time and energy to complete, the map is pretty expansive, and your home base -built on top of the camper van- can always get bigger and better. You’ve also got new landmarks to explore and new blueprints to unlock. Plus, you can upgrade the camper van itself. So you’ve always got something new to do. The trouble is, all of these tasks boil down to driving around and looking for stuff. It gets repetitive faster than I’d like.

So Much Driving to Do

It turns out that simulating camping leaves a lot of mysterious gaps in the gameplay loop. Actual camping (or glamping in this case) is filled out by long stretches of doing nothing at all. Chatting with friends, tending to a fire, watching the sun set. The act of camping itself is the activity. This is almost impossible to accurately translate into a game. You need something to do, which in this case means a series of scavenger hunts.

Don’t get me wrong! Each individual component is delightful. There’s a little dopamine with every fire lit and every space explored. Outbound is a beautiful world, full of incredible technology and hopeful ideas about sustainability. Making an impossibly complex living space on top of your camper van is also rad. It all adds up to a mindlessly satisfying gameplay loop. But there’s also very little substance, at least not when you zoom out a bit.

Missing That Certain Something 

In that way, Outbound is kind of like real-life camping. Freed from any burdensome goals, you’re merely soaking in the sights and enriching your experience. Rather than bingeing this game on a weekend, you’d be better served by checking in for a few hours a week. Stop by, light a few campfires, and make your home base even bigger. After all, there’s a certain Zen bliss in taking things this easy. On the other hand, there is no larger goal to achieve. The experience is largely what you make of it. For a lot of players, this could be an extremely frustrating game. And it does feel like something big is missing here. Yet, I’m certain I’ll be checking in on Outbound quite regularly for a good while yet.

***An Xbox Series X code was provided by the publisher***