Game: Outbound
Genre: Exploration, Simulation
System: Steam (Windows) (also available on the Epic Games Store, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, PlayStation 5, Switch, and Switch 2)
Developer | Publisher: Square Glade Games
Age Rating: US E | EU 3+
Controller Support: Full
Price: US $24.99 | UK £19.99 | EU € 24,99
Release Date: May 11, 2026
Review code provided, with many thanks to Press Engine.
Outbound is an exploration, simulation, and crafting game all about deciding to live in a van. You travel through a park, picking up items to help build out your camper, fix bridges, and connect locations.
A Rise of Van Living Games
As someone who immediately fell in love with both Camper Van: Make It Home and Fruitbus, I am honored and excited to play another game about fixing up a bus and working or living out of it. Outbound, however, took a completely different approach to this aesthetic by filling this van-life game with exploration, crafting, collecting, and living life on the road.
In Outbound, you have left the city behind in a near-future world. You now live on your van in a park, and you live off of the land around you. You can add new machines to your van to help you make more and more complicated machines, prettier furnishings, and upgrade your van until it can do everything you need it to do.
There is a lot to explore in Outbound; there are woods to collect wood, food, and plant fibers in, wheat fields full of grains, and even little campsites left by others that need to be cleaned of trash and other debris. The park is a peaceful place, and you appear to be the only person there at the moment. Once you have completed enough stuff on the first map, there is a whole second map to explore as well.
A Peaceful Life in Outbound
Outbound is one of those games that makes you want to sell everything you have and move into a van for sure. The world that you inhabit is peaceful, filled with natural wonder, and has everything you need to survive and thrive in it. As you collect items and blueprints, you begin to be able to build a little home for yourself on top of your van, complete with windows, solar panels, and all the crafting machines you could ever need.
As you drive through each zone, you can pick up new items, foods, and blueprints, allowing you to build even more stuff for yourself and your dog, if you chose to have one. There are tons of collectible items and quests that you can choose to go after and complete, or not. Your journey is up to you.
The Pros of Outbound
The visuals in Outbound are beautiful and peaceful, and the developers added some delightful, calming music as well. The sound design leaves a little to be desired, but overall, the effect is nice and soothing. Everything is sunny and colorful, and the even the thunderstorms and rain feel nice.
The gameplay loop is also a lot of fun. If you like building, decorating, collecting materials, crafting, and that sort of thing, Outbound does it pretty well. The driving mini game is fun, and each of the vehicles feels different.
Overall, I enjoyed my time with Outbound. While I haven’t finished the game completely, I did get more than halfway through the content that is currently available.
The Cons of Outbound
I didn’t have a whole lot of issues with my ten hours of playtime. I didn’t run into very many bugs, and the ones I did were small. For example, there is a ladder you have to jump up onto to access instead of walking into it like all of the others. Mostly, Outbound seemed to run as intended, and all the quests worked.
There were a couple of small things I didn’t like, however. I really wish there was a third-person mode when you are walking around. There is a first- and a third-person mode for driving, and I think having that same option when you are on your feet would be great. The movement from being in the van in third-person to exiting the van into first-person is really jarring. I don’t usually get nauseous from that sort of thing in video games, but I did feel a little dizzy watching that animation over and over.
In Outbound, there is also a photo mode, which is awesome, but there is no benefit to photographing wild life or anything like that. It would have been such a wonderful addition to the game, and it feels like something is missing when you walk by flamingos, herons, and butterflies, but are not prompted to capture them in some way or other.
I think my biggest pet peeve with Outbound is the stamina system. Similar to the stamina system in Skyward Sword, the stamina limitations don’t add anything of value. There’s no reason why you shouldn’t be able to run for as long as you like in peaceful games like this; stamina seems to only be there for a modicum of verisimilitude, but it just ends up being an annoyance. I think stamina is interesting in games with combat, or if there was climbing in Outbound, but just putting limitations on how much you can run for no reason is one of things I like least in games like this.
Conclusion
Outbound has a lot of great elements to it. It’s fun, it has a lot of cute details, and the whole thing is extremely cozy. There is a lot to love about it, and it encourages you to take you time, sit around, and relax as you slide into your new life.
There were some issues, the stamina being the biggest one for me, but if that doesn’t bother you, you will probably adore Outbound. Overall, it was a good time, and I look forward to completing it in the coming days.
Final Verdict: I Like it a Lot.
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