Crash and Learn
Heading Out is a title fueled by its inspirations. While its most notable might be the 1971 movie, Vanishing Point, numerous driving games and the rogue-like genre itself certainly play a big part. As you travel across America in an effort to escape your fear, you’ll take part in dozens of races, outsmart hundreds of cops, and meet an eclectic cast of characters just trying to survive out there. While Heading Out has all the pieces of what could be an incredible game, it hits a few potholes that leave you stranded on the side of the road.
Like any good road trip, the journey can often be as important as the destination, and Heading Out has very unique parts that build up each of those factors. While the game itself is technically a driving game, it also leans in the lane of being a series of unattached short stories that are layered on top of your own personal issues which are chosen by you at the start of each run. Factor that in with an underlying narrative of you running from your past, escaping your fear as it creeps behind you, and that generally sums up Heading Out to a certain degree.
Regardless of its gameplay moments, Heading Out’s conceit is escaping your fear. This is projected as a red force that slowly creeps behind you as you drive, make choices, or rest to refill your focus; can’t have you falling asleep at the wheel, after all. You are told how many hours it is behind you, filling the sky with its crimson embrace as you constantly have it stalk you and your choices. While a major component of escaping it is a tad predictable, and one that is literally spelled out for you. it was still a moment I rather enjoyed, especially with the scene that followed, making me largely satisfied with the game’s aesthetically pleasing conclusion, even if I didn’t feel that same sense of accomplishment from a narrative standpoint.
Heading Out is also a rogue-lite as you push cross-country during your run. The game does a great job at helping you in that effort as well, such as being able to steal gas when money gets a bit tight; you simply have to outrun the cops or hope they lose you. Each of the game’s four acts begins in the same way in the same location through an identical drive. You awaken from a dream that ends with your death, crashing into a barricade after you were neck and neck in a race against your rival. Back behind the wheel, you’ll then plot a course to that act’s destination. Each path consumes a certain amount of fuel and will have particular events that either have you listening to the radio, taking part in a race, or a brief stop to rest, tune up your car, or take in a brief story moment.
The game segments itself into a few components, so let’s discuss them on their own. Like the movie, Vanishing Point, the driver in that film is attempting to drive across the country. There is also a second protagonist in the radio host, a man who is essentially cheering on the driver and acts as sort of the proxy audience. The radio hosts here vary from a conspiracy nut who has locked himself in his recording booth at the station to a woman who uses a lot of colorful language and talks about the various races we win. She also has a habit of talking about her personal life that simply didn’t do it for me. Each host repeats a great deal of their dialogue, especially the latter. I found their performances to clash with the game's tone far too much. Thankfully, you can skip them if you want as they often show up either on the map or after you have completed a race. I get what they were trying to do, but I wish they talked more about what I was doing than the randomness they seemed intent on spewing.
As you begin each run, you’ll be presented with a map. While the UI is rather busy with several things that should have been their own tab, you’ll have your destination marked in blue with the paths you want to take in yellow. Everything else is black and white and your fear is marked in red. Fear can bleed through each road, regardless of which path you have took. This means you generally want to work towards a straight path to the goal without allowing the other connected roads to be eaten up by your fear. Technically, you can make your run last as long as you like, you just have to watch out how much the fear has consumed the adjoining roads.
Each path will use up a certain amount of fuel, which you’ll supplement by earning money in races. Money can also be used during story moments as well, such as being robbed, donating some to those who need it, and so on. You can also speed up as you drive on the map, but that will consume more fuel and cause your wanted guage to increase, ala GTA. If a cop is marked in red and appears on the map, you can hold the left trigger to hide, allowing them to pass on by. Some cops will remain stationary, so you’ll have to hold the trigger until they go away, which causes time to fly by, allowing your fear to slowly creep up. That said, you can head into the direction of the cops and take part in a chase if you want.
The driving aspects of Heading Out are more or less pretty good, even if the available vehicles don’t really feel too different apart from their speed. It’s a shame that certain paths didn’t provide upgrades that you would keep if you won a race or outran a dozen cops. It would have made some paths more attractive than just sticking to the shorter and more safe lanes. While your car looks different, it is more of a cosmetic choice than anything substantial. Still, racing feels pretty good apart from some handling issues with how bouncy your car can feel, winning races or outrunning the cops is fairly simple.
The last component of Heading Out are the short events that you’ll engage with. You play as the Interstate Jackelope, a sort of myth to the people across America. You can either gain a positive reputation or the reverse, it will all depend on how you handle your choices when presented with them. From helping people to robbing them to leaving them to their own troubles, these moments are slices of a small narrative that contribute to how your run will continue. They don’t really stack up and become some big part of the story like Road 96 handled theirs, but they are fun diversions that can give you a boost in cash, focus, or the opposite, it all depends on your choices. Some choices in fact, will be greyed out depending on your reputation, so there is a point to being a nice guy or a complete bastard. In fact, it is never really clear if you are playing as male or female, it leaves it open to you, even in an instance where you have the shot of sleeping with some random nomad.
You’ll also start each run by picking a few elements of your own backstory. They can be either randomized or chosen with intent. From your own favorite memory, a bad break-up, to your own personal trauma, you can embody the Jackelope as yourself, if you like. They don’t really seem to do much other than provide a short story moment about remembering a wild road trip or a cherished childhood memory. I wish they would have stacked on top of each other to be something crucial to the main story, but they feel like very hollow elements that don’t really add up to much and not truly referenced outside of their own personal act.
When it comes to the rogue-like elements that create the loop, this is largely where Heading Out nearly had me but ended up kicking me out of the car. I love the path idea of picking a way to get to your destination, the stops you’ll make along the way, and all that. I think it works extremely well in how it is set up. Where it suffers is that every race is against the same voiced characters, meaning you’ll hear maybe three or four voices across every single race, complete with the same voice lines. In fact, even some race courses are repeated, regardless of where you are in America. The same happens with the radio hosts as you’ll hear the same voice lines being delivered like they assumed they are new.
While Heading Out is not a terribly long game given it only has four acts, you’ll see a lot of the same elements repeated just a bit too much. I like the idea of gaining items from certain choices, but I’m unclear on what those actually mean or if they actually do anything apart from filling up a collectibles grid on your menu. What I like about other rogue-lite/like games like Hades or Dead Cells, is that each run has the chance to feel completely new, despite visiting areas that you’ve sprinted through a hundred times before. Here, you really do feel like you’ve been to the same places and done the same things over and over again, it doesn’t hide the feel of the loop in ways that I really would have preferred. While you’ll unlock new activities each act, such as traffic jams or barricades, they feel like modular changes more so than large sweeps of a brush.
Heading Out’s biggest strength comes in its visuals. This is a very unique-looking game that removes the color from its world in favor of a black-and-white graphic novel aesthetic. Progress and racing opponents are marked in yellow, the cops and your fear are in red, with your rival, a racer you’ll face at the end of each act, is blue. This look is wildly successful for what they are shooting for. While there is a moment in the game’s final moments that goes another way, at that point, it felt earned, even if the pop-in is pretty noticeable as it pans around.
A big focus of Heading Out is in its music. Races and cop chases are paired alongside a track, with its length determining how long the driving segment is. Each act has its own unique track with the start of Act IV having the best song in the game. In fact, I sort of wish that band just did the whole soundtrack. This is because while that track kicks ass, the bulk of the music here just doesn’t fit the tone of what this game is doing visually and narratively. You’ll take part in a race to some sort of mellow track that doesn’t match the intensity required here, and the same occurs with running from the cops. That said, I think every song is solid, as I don’t think there is a bad track here, but most of the music just doesn’t feel made for this game whatsoever.
While the aesthetic of Heading Out is tremendous, the font size across the game is a huge miss. I played Heading Out mostly on the Steam Deck, where it ran extremely well apart from four individual crashes. That said, the font is barely readable without having to use my phone’s camera to zoom in and let me read most of it, let alone the rewards for certain choices which are a much smaller font. The issue is there is so much real estate for the text that I am surprised they went with such a tiny size to begin with. I would assume this is the only reason the game was not verified. I would suggest that if you are to pick up Heading Out you do so with the intent of playing on a monitor unless you are fine with the very tiny font on the Steam Deck or other comparable handhelds.
Heading Out has a lot of great ideas and executes them fairly well, just not always in a way that benefits the attempted cohesion. Navigating America and picking your paths is a fun idea but the repeated events and voicework can leave the rogue-lite elements feeling a tad undercooked. Driving feels fairly good here, I just wish each car felt different to drive, especially as they are treated like act rewards. Despite how much I am criticizing the game, I did rather enjoy my time with it, I just would have liked to see more work put into making each of its gameplay elements feel unique from run to run. Heading Out is a solid concept that I would love to see perfected and improved upon should we see a follow-up, because frankly, it’s a sharp-looking game that really stands out in a sea of games that all look the same.
Developer - Serious Sim.
Publisher - Saber Interactive.
Released - May 7th, 2024.
Available On - Windows (Steam).
Rated - (N/A) - No Descriptors.
Platform Reviewed - Steam/Steam Deck.
Review Access - Review code was provided by the publisher for the purpose of this review.
Jeff is the original founder of Analog Stick Gaming. His favorite games include The Witcher III, the Mass Effect Trilogy, Hi-Fi Rush, Stellar Blade, Hellbade: Senua’s Sacrifice, and the Legend of Heroes series, especially Trails of Cold Steel III & IV.