Just a week before Outbound was slated to launch on April 23, the devs shared a message revealing that it’s been pushed back by just under a full month. The new release date is slated for May 14, which means there are three more weeks of waiting before it arrives.
In a post shared to X, the devs called this choice a “difficult decision” that was necessary due to an issue that was discovered very late in the process. Since it was meant to debut next week, the team decided there wasn’t enough time to get it fixed, causing this delay.
Without going into specifics, the devs did reveal that it would “negatively impact” players’ enjoyment of the game. Since Outbound is slated to launch across all platforms at the same time, the team needed extra time to make this happen, as they otherwise wouldn’t have been able to.
“Please be assured that our team has worked extremely hard to address this and did everything possible to stay on schedule,” the devs said in their delay announcement post.
Outbound originally started off as a campaign on Kickstarter back on Aug. 13, 2024. The fundraising period for funding it ran until Sept. 12, 2024. Once the goals were met, the game then entered full development, with a demo for it eventually being released on March 3, 2026.
If you were excited to set out on a new adventure with friends, the postponement of this game may come as a big disappointment. Luckily, it’s not a massive delay, and you can technically still play at least part of it ahead of the launch.
To make this delay a bit easier to cope with, the devs announced that the Outbound demo will remain available until May 12, giving you plenty of time to test out a portion of the cozy van life game to determine if it’s right for you before it releases. The demo is available to play on PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X/S. The full game will be available for Nintendo Switch and Nintendo Switch 2 when it launches, but the demo isn’t available on either one.
Outbound is an exploration-focused game that allows you to set out on a journey alone or with friends across vast, open-world biomes. Along the way, you’ll need to gather key resources, enhance your van, build a home on top of it, find ways to source energy from the environment, visit important Landmarks, and so much more. You can set off on a new adventure when it officially arrives on the new release date, May 14.
