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My favourite stories often revolve around cars. That’s not because I’m a car person at all. In fact, I actively dislike them and by unfortunate extension, racing games, too. No, I like stories set in cars because they bring out something innately human inside of us. Being trapped inside a vehicle, perhaps with someone else, can be a tiresome and relentless journey, and it usually relegates you to vulnerability and truth – exactly what you’ll feel playing Heading Out.
I started playing it on a bit of a whim. Off the back of Hades 2, I wasn’t sure if I wanted to jump into another roguelike so soon, but something told me this was going to be an experience unlike most others. Blending as many seemingly incompatible genres together with seriously impressive style, Heading Out is a visual novel roguelike played through road trips. Action takes place in short racing segments while you control discovery and journey from an abstracted top-down view of American highways. It’s a simple concept, though it’s expertly layered with contextual radio shows that speak to the mysterious driver’s conscience, or decision-based visual novel sequences that bake consequence and morality into the game.
That’s Heading Out in a nutshell, but the wonder of this game digs infinitely deeper than that. I realised this fast; before I’d even seen the inside of the car. Character creation menus in games often let you change plenty of things about yourself, with escapism a primary focus. Bethesda’s character creation is a whole level in itself, while Baldur’s Gate 3 and Cyberpunk 2077 are battling it out for the most detailed genital systems in gaming history (I have not fact-checked that, yet). But, in Heading Out, character creation hangs up the phone on escapism and instead invites invasive introspection inside.
You can lie, sure, or you can provide alternative answers that won’t irk any sensitivities you might have, though your experience in Heading Out will largely be influenced by these choices. Heading Out was already nudging me along a path of vulnerability and exposure, and I hadn’t even headed out yet.
When you do, you will feel the Fear creeping behind you, and at the end of your runs, you will look up into a sky of crimson dyed clouds. This vortex is the abyss, and it is looking directly at you.
Self-reflection is the spine of this game – not racing gameplay, roguelike mechanics, or visual novel storytelling.
When you fail a run, you will be greeted by a ghostly figure evoking the austerity of death. She will kiss your chin, and tell you that you will die over and over again. Death dances around you and though she might resemble a Marionette, you are in-fact the puppet.
While the game gives you stark choices to make throughout the American landscape, they are often each paired with dire consequences. Whether you choose to cut through Missouri or take a detour via Kentucky, Heading Out will consistently stack the odds against you. It’s always manageable, and never needlessly difficult, aspects that I heavily appreciate, and aspects that ensure that the narrative keeps flowing.
You will feel it the most as you navigate the dusty roads of the East Coast. As you stowaway runaway brides, or give a lift to an unloved person attending their own funeral, you will be hampered by police chases and back-street hold-ups, all the while the Fear is catching up with you as you resist falling asleep at the wheel.
One of the best features breathing life into Heading Out are the contextual radio shows that react to your choices. You will hear loudmouthed conservative Americans chewing away at their thoughts on marriage, or socialist radio hosts praising the Interstate Jackalope’s rogue exploits. If you’re afraid of politics making their way into games, steer well clear of Heading Out. It is synthesised through the absurdity of the United States, and that’s what makes it the game it is.
The radio show interludes will often follow major events in your run. Coined the Interstate Jackalope, your character quickly becomes an urban legend as you race from Route to Road, and every choice you make will soon become your own myth. There is enough 80s and 90s seediness and vitriol in the voices of each host that you will either love or hate them, though ultimately it becomes clear that the consequences of your actions are inescapable.
Those favourite stories I mentioned at the start; Don DeLilo’s Americana, Neil Gaiman’s American Gods, and Iain Reid’s I’m Thinking of Ending Things, are not just tied together by their all-American road-trip, but instead that they’re all about people running away.
Sure, this game is also about running away. But at no point does it tell you to stop, nor does it force a boring moral compass upon you: It’s time to face the consequences of your actions. Instead, it enables you to run away fully. It drags you along a high-octane odyssey with as much American drama as a Safdie flick, and it’s as relentless as those roadtrip films of the late twentieth century. It’s through sheer failure, disaster, and relentless loss, that Heading Out’s self-reflection really gets to you.
