Outbound: Cozy Campervan Survival Mixes Firewatch Calm With The Long Dark

Outbound is a campervan driving survival game from Square Glade Games. The Steam Next Fest demo plays like The Long Dark run through a Pixar filter: it shares light crafting, scavenging for food, a loose sense of direction and that lonely, post-human world, but it presents a much softer, more forgiving tone.

You can get hungry, but you won’t starve to death—you’ll just pass out. The world has no human interactions, yet plenty of friendly animals and a co-op mode the writer couldn’t convince a friend to try. The motorhome is massive and unwieldy, yet you can’t run the animals over; there’s friction, but the world isn’t out to make you fail.

Goals feel optional rather than urgent. Prompts for schematics or new locations appear, but everything carries an “only if you want to” attitude. Systems like building a house, starting a farm or amassing a horde of bunnies by feeding them berries are straightforward and forgiving; you can also just munch wild mushrooms, sit by a fire with your dog and watch the sunset.

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