Heading Out is a road trip game about outdriving your past (and the cops)

digitaltrends.com:

Have you ever just wanted to run away from it all? When you’re dealing with mounting problems at home, the idea of jumping in a car and driving away as far as possible sounds appealing. What better way to leave the past in the dust than to hit the open road and go wherever your wheels take you?

That idea is at the heart of Heading Out, a new narrative racing game that’s unlike anything I’ve played before. Inspired by classic road films like Easy Rider, the upcoming game combines racing, visual novel decision-making, and a roguelite structure into a single eclectic project featuring a stark black-and-white art style that calls back to PlatinumGames’ Mad World. It’s the kind of left-field project that needs to be on your radar this spring.

My demo would take me through the first act of the story, giving me a sense of how Heading Out‘s unique “run” structure works. There’s a lot to explain. When I begin, I’m asked to answer some prompts that determine my outlaw antihero’s personal life. Those decisions define what the character is running away from and what will eventually come back to haunt him in the cross-country story.

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From there, I’d get a sense of the genre-melding structure of the journey. After an introduction to its racing segments, which have me speeding through different landscapes and avoiding road hazards, I’m dropped onto a map of the United States. My drive begins around Ohio and my goal is to follow routes to get up to North Dakota. Rather than driving in real time, I select a route on the map and accelerate to quickly move my car along that route. As I drive, I’m pulled into randomized events, from narrative decision-making to road races that put me back in control of the actual car. It’s sort of like takingKentucky Route Zero and turning it into a roguelike.