Heading Out Review – Finding a New Gear

Heading Out might be the most authentic driving game I’ve played, which is weird because it doesn’t care about cars that much. Whereas driving sims like Forza hyper-fixate on the minutia (allowing players to tweak tire pressure and alignment for the perfect ride), Heading Out cares more about the existential experience of driving. “What does it mean to be a driver?” it seems to ask. Specifically, what does it mean to be in a ’70s road film? Vanishing Point and The Driver come to mind. Even Expeditions, a game obsessed with the journey, doesn’t think about travel this way. Heading Out has its speed bumps, but it’s still the best thing on four wheels.

Heading Out Review

Heading Out is a roguelike racing sim / visual novel. During this cross-country journey, you’ll evade the police, compete in street races, manage your gas and wakefulness, and interact with a variety of eccentric strangers. At the end lies your ultimate goal, a race against the Greatest Driver Alive. Win and you might redeem your shattered life. Lose and it’s back to mile one. This unusual blend of gameplay elements blends shockingly well, creating a driving experience that’s as immersive as it gets, even when the road is just a backdrop for other drama.

Story: The Jackalope Rides Again

You’re the Interstate Jackalope: an enigmatic driver, a nobody, an icon. Your history, motives, and true identity are the subject of public speculation. As you carve your way across the U.S., radio hosts argue about who you are and what you represent. Are you a common criminal? A scared kid on the run? A folk hero and vigilante? Every cop you evade, pedestrian you help, and street race you win adds to your reputation, for better or for worse. The Interstate Jackalope is a legend in the making, and only you can decide what kind of legend it will be.

At the beginning of the game, you’ll answer questions about your first love, your relationships, and your regrets. Your answers will shape the narrative going forward, changing dialog and even the ending to a degree. It makes each run feel intensely personal. Combine that with the cascade of RNG encounters on the road, and Heading Out becomes an exceptional emergent narrative. Will the Interstate Jackalope stand up to the cops? Find love? Lose a night to drinking and drugs? Fall in with terrorists? Free zoo animals? Only you can say.

Heading Out tackles serious issues. Racism, inequality, intimate partner violence, and depression are just a few. In the spirit of the films that inspired it, Heading Out uses a combination of dramatic imagery and pointed dialog to explore its themes. Like Phantom Liberty, it’s not preachy or patronizing: it’s just viscerally aware of how awful people can be. There’s no meaningful way to play it without engaging with these issues, and that’s a good thing. Heading Out uses driving the way a painter uses oils and canvas: it’s a medium for a message and a beautiful one at that.

It’s a testament to the game’s excellent writing that Heading Out never becomes unfun or unpleasant despite grappling with such rough issues. Transitions between funny, painful, and thrilling moments are smooth, and the segue from driving to overworld map navigation is perfect. Even the HUD enhances the immersion and storytelling, something that few games (Elite Dangerous comes to mind) pull off. Serious Sim understands how great the game’s story is, and the dev put everything into maintaining its enchantment.

Gameplay: Asphalt Angels

Heading Out splits its time between map navigation and in-person driving. On the map, you pick your route across the U.S. on your way to the final race against the Greatest Driver Alive. Your Fear is chasing you, however, eating up the road. If it ever catches you, it’s game over. This mechanic forces you to pick your routes carefully. A detour through Oklahoma City might let you get repairs at a mechanic and buy some cigarettes to stay awake, but you might be forced to speed past cops to escape your Fear.

Money matters. To pay for gas you’ll need to win street races, complete deliveries, or make specific decisions during events. Fender-benders reduce your Car Condition and require repairs, forcing you to spend money and possibly lose precious hours at a garage. The longer you drive without rest, the more you lose Focus. Lose too much and you can fall asleep behind the wheel, causing your screen to fade in and out of blackness mid-race, a terrifying experience every time it happens.

Randomized events keep things spicy. Helping a hitchhiker might increase your Fame, improve your Reputation, and give you gas money. It might also provoke a police chase or exhaust your Focus. The faster you drive, the farther you’ll leave your Fear behind. Unfortunately, speeding attracts the police, raising your Wanted Level until you cross state lines. Should you take Quaaludes to stop your Fear but tank your Focus or stay alert while Fear nips at your bumper?

Driving segments include street racing, outrunning the cops, and vibing to the radio on lonely country roads. There are several unlockable vehicles, but no suspension or brake customization to worry about. Heading Out sees driving not through the lens of a motorsport pro but that of a free spirit. It’s about the journey. You’re awarded Style Points for jumps, drifting, and near misses, and your performance affects your Fame. That, in turn, affects your story options.

Heading Out delivers an arcade-style driving experience. It takes a loose approach to handling, acceleration, and drifting, and if you’re a racing sim or off-roading aficionado who expects full control of your vehicle down to the tire pressure, this isn’t the game for you. The AI doesn’t pose much of a challenge on the standard difficulty, either. You’re much more likely to lose to a head-on collision with oncoming traffic than because your actual opponent sped past you.

Heading Out feels more like a visual novel than a traditional driving game. The random encounters, radio, police evasions, and resource management do a great job of immersing you and differentiating one run from another. With a wide selection of random encounters, it’ll take a while before the same event happens twice. Whereas many roguelikes soon feel too samey, Heading Out felt like a new road trip every time. That feeling might fade after a few dozen hours, but short of that, the balance of scripted action and RNG weirdness is perfect.

Graphics & Audio: Glorious Gray

Your foot stamps the pedal, and the hot rod’s engine roars in reply. Sirens wail behind you as three police cars give chase. Ahead there’s only the blacktop, carving a line through the rolling hills like the stroke of a calligraphy brush. Riley’s rebel radio show has given way to music, a driving rock anthem that could’ve been ripped from the opening montage of your favorite outlaw film. Speed lines bolt from your car as you swerve across the center line to avoid a moseying station wagon. There’s a police roadblock ahead, so you do the only thing you can, wrenching the wheel and bouncing across the dirt.

You’re not wrong for getting Sin City vibes from the game’s aesthetic. Unlike Frank Miller‘s pioneering comic, however, Heading Out doesn’t use black-and-white to convey emotional flatness and desperation. Here it’s used in lieu of sepia to evoke nostalgia and timelessness. The Interstate Jackalope is a timeless rebel, a modern Calamity Jane. Heading Out uses comic panels and a desaturated palette to emphasize the tension between the fragile, fallible human and the legend-in-the-making. It works.

The radio is an integral part of gameplay, and not just because races only last until a song ends. Jazz, rock, and talk radio keep your ears company, and the mix is solid. Every radio host gives a unique and compelling vocal performance (from Riley’s seat-of-the-pants rebellion to the Alex Jones wannabe ranting about patriotism). Together, they add a ton of texture to the world. Serious Sim put just as much care into track curation and scripting as it did the game’s grayscale look. I often opted for riskier routes just to get more radio time, which is saying something.

Each of the game’s four acts introduces new events, challenges, and road hazards. The background, unfortunately, doesn’t change in meaningful ways. Locations are mostly a forgettable blur. Thankfully, the gameplay keeps things interesting even when the setting becomes monotonous. From the hum of your engine to the steel-on-steel crunch of cops doing a PIT maneuver, the sound effects are far more dynamic. That’s doubly true when you layer on that heavenly radio.

Conclusion: Giving It Gas

I experienced no crashes and few glitches during my time with the game. On paper, visual novel/roguelike/racer is Jackson Pollock messy, but in practice, it works. Heading Out romanticizes outlaws, drifters, and iconoclasts, which makes sense. It’s a bit of a rebel itself. Neither the racing nor strategic elements deliver the Mariana Trench depths necessary to rival The Binding of Isaac and the like, but that’s not the goal. You may exhaust Heading Out faster than some of its kin. Still, few roguelikes will impact you the way Serious Sim’s game will. It’s a game that leaves it all on the blacktop.

Heading Out is available on PC (reviewed).