Road trip with your own home: "Outbound" turns the motorhome into a base-building dream

Debora Pape

8/5/2026

Translation: machine translated

Pictures: Debora Pape

In the cozy game "Outbound", road trip feeling and creative base building merge into a relaxed solar punk adventure. Despite minor pacing problems, the game has a fascinating pull.

The sun goes down and night falls. The headlights of my motorhome cut through the darkness. It's time to park the vehicle and set up camp for the night. I quickly water the vegetable patches that I have planted in front of the camper. Then I lie down in my cosy bed and dream of the cute rabbits I fed today. Life is good!

Simply leaving everyday life, work and worries behind and driving off in a campervan - that's a dream that I fulfil in the cozy game «Outbound». I sit behind the wheel of a small bus that looks like the prototype of the hippie mobile and let my mind wander. Before me lies an open world with collectable hidden objects such as garden gnomes and pretty viewpoints.

Sound a bit thin for a game? It would be. That's why «Outbound» lets me expand the bus into a cosy, rolling base for which I need new building plans, materials and decorations. This adds a creative component to the game and motivates me to drive along familiar routes again to collect new plans.

A house to go

Unlike I initially expected, I'm not using campervan modules to convert the van, such as a kitchenette and shelves for more storage space. «Outbound» takes a different approach: the roof of my vehicle becomes the foundation for a real house, which I assemble from floor, wall and roof elements. If I want to - of course! - I can even give my house a veranda with flower pots and a glass greenhouse for healthy meals.

Now, a detached house is not particularly suitable for travelling over bridges and forest paths. That's why the entire structure can be stowed away in the car in a fraction of a second. The basic idea is actually simple. Anyone who has ever travelled in a campervan will be familiar with it: In the evening, the awning is pulled out, the power cable is plugged into the stationary socket and the camping chair is set up in front of the bus. This means more comfort for the duration of your stay.

This principle is taken to the extreme at «Outbound» with home and garden construction. This gives me both a small, charming bus for exploring the four biomes and the opportunity to build an extensive home to my liking and always have it with me. As a base-building-fetishist, I think it's a great idea.

«Outbound» is not a survival crafting game, but it doesn't need to shy away from comparison when it comes to base building. Through construction plans and research, I learn how to produce higher-quality materials and new tools or upgrade existing ones. This gives me access to more building elements, furniture and workbenches, which I can then use to further improve my house.

Cozy on the move thanks to Solarpunk

When I'm driving through a thunderstorm and the rain is pelting down on the roof of my vehicle, I feel all tension fall away from me. Plants swaying in the wind, rushing waterfalls and cute rabbits that I can feed soothe my soul.

For me, the Solarpunk setting also contributes to the feeling of relaxation in the game. This is an optimistic science fiction genre in which humans utilise technical achievements in harmony with nature instead of exploiting them. In «Outbound», I can't even cut down trees to get building materials. If I need wood, I have to look for pieces of wood lying around or fallen tree trunks.

I collect rubbish at rest stops and throw it into the recycler in my campervan. The reward: vouchers for new building plans. Sometimes there are also vending machines at the side of the road. I can throw in bottle caps I've picked up along the way and receive new decorative objects at random. This provides additional motivation to keep my eyes open in the world.

First, I charge the batteries of my electric vehicle with a generator that I feed with wood and plant fibres. Later, I install wind turbines and solar panels on my house to keep the batteries fully charged. Glass greenhouses are also typical of the solar punk genre, where everything is designed with sustainability in mind. A funny discovery: solar panels are attached to the wings of a windmill - which already uses wind energy sustainably in itself. Why not?

Sometimes the game is too slow

Although I enjoy «Outbound» a lot, not everything convinces me. One example is the running speed. Calmness and leisureliness are all well and good, but my character moves agonisingly slowly. That's not relaxing, it's forced time-wasting. So I avoid longer journeys on foot because even short distances feel really far. For my taste, endurance sprinting would be the ideal speed for normal walking.

I also find resource gathering too grind-heavy at times. Because I can't cut down trees, I have to look for wood on the ground. I keep stopping at the side of the road and jumping out of the van to pick up a single log - a drop in the ocean. The slow walking speed also makes forays through the woods to collect wood rather annoying.

I'm also missing the option to mark POIs on the map. Otherwise I won't be able to find the cave with the mineable ores or other landmarks later on. I would also like to see more information about items. For a special tool, I need the crafting resource «Thread». It doesn't say how to make threads.

There is also no research tree in which I can work towards a specific workbench. Most of the construction plans are given to me at random. This means I have little influence on when I can produce a required material or tool. This feeling of frustration disrupts the relaxing flow of the game.

«Outbound» is available from 11 May for PC (Steam), PS5, Xbox Series and Nintendo Switch. The game was provided to me by Square Glade Games for testing purposes on PC.

Debora Pape

Editor

Debora.Pape@galaxus.de

Feels just as comfortable in front of a gaming PC as she does in a hammock in the garden. Likes the Roman Empire, container ships and science fiction books. Focuses mostly on unearthing news stories about IT and smart products.

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