You’re cruising gently down a quiet secluded road in your electric camper, the trees reaching up to stroke the blue skies on your right. Beyond the white sandy beach to your left, the sun starts to dip below the horizon, making the ocean glisten. Things couldn’t be more serene. A sense of ease creeps into your bones as a relaxed smile spreads across your face.
But, wait. What’s that? Could it be?
You slam on the brakes, your camper wheels screeching as the vehicle jerks to an emergency stop! You immediately crash out of the camper door, jumping to the tarmac and racing across the street. You can’t believe what you’ve seen in the long grass by the side of the road.
It can’t be. This changes everything. An everwood log, sat so innocently by the roadside? it’s just what you needed to craft that axe upgrade!
Phew! Things were getting a little tense there. You grab the log, hop back in your vehicle and continue your gentle cruise to tonight’s scenic camping spot.
Outbound is a snuggly open-world adventure. Explore several beautifully colourful biomes in your customisable camper with just your doggo (and up to three friends in online play!) for company. The game encourages exploration at your own pace, with plenty of opportunities to sit and admire the view. Pick up never-ending varieties of resources on your adventures to craft new tools, upgrades, gadgets and of course, building materials for your camper-top home.
The camper-top home is one of the best features of the game. There’s a huge variety of building materials and furniture to choose from with a range of customisable colours. Plus, the different resources available in each biome means your camper-top home is always changing and upgrading, giving the player plenty to play with. I’ve gone for a full treehouse vibe with my home; a large cosy wooden hut with lots of windows and balconies on each side to appreciate the views no matter where I park. I’ve also made sure to include lots of twinkly fairy lights, shelves featuring stacks of reading material and a ladder to the roof-top terrace!
Fans of home-building and interior decorating modes will enjoy the creativity and freedom provided by this particular part of the game. The only downside is that the drawn-out discovery of resources between biomes means you can’t unlock the more exciting building materials until much later in the game. And if you’re not careful your entire home can become overrun with millions of identical-looking crafting gadgets!
The exploration elements of Outbound are just as enjoyable as the building. Each open world biome featured in the game has a number of iconic landmarks to discover, each with a signal tower to download your next crafting upgrade. You can drive your camper off-road to visit hard to reach places, and any areas of interest that can’t be reached by vehicle are clearly marked with a hiking sign. When out of your vehicle, you explore the world in first person perspective, but when driving your camper, you can be in either first or third person. Both driving and hiking are good fun – although ladders can be rather nightmarish to navigate – and there are plenty of fun little features to find and interact with, from berry-addicted bunny rabbits to teddy bear weddings on the beach.
The game generally encourages a gentle and relaxed pace to everything the player does. Walking and driving paces are generally quite slow – the response to this will vary from player to player. You can of course add upgrades to speed up your vehicle and player character, but it’s a while before this option becomes available. I personally enjoyed the pacing and felt it added to the cosy atmosphere in the game. Real life is enough of a rush as it is!
My only frustration came to light when the sun went down and my player character became too tired to sprint anywhere. In a game that encourages you to take things slowly, having to get all of your exploration on foot finished in plenty of time to get back to your camper by nightfall seems a bit counter-intuitive.
