Out and About Is A New Cozy Game That Might Actually Improve Your Next Nature Walk
When in doubt, leave it out.
Foraging for plants is one of the most ubiquitous activities in video games, next to smacking skeletons with swords and skipping past NPC dialogue. Whether you’re trying to craft a potion in an RPG or saving up for a new wardrobe in a farming sim, you’re going to get your hands dirty digging up quite a few plants. Most games reduce the process to a single button press, but one great Next Fest demo turns picking plants into a captivating game of its own.
As the Out and About demo opens, you’re on the way to visit your grandma in a small coastal town called Portobello. As you’re camping in the woods outside town, a major storm rolls through, and campsite manager Annie is left with a nasty scrape. Fortunately, with the aid of a local forager, you’re able to gather plants just steps away to help Annie heal.
Out and About’s world is cute and vibrant.
Foraging is a fun, multi-step process in Out and About. When you come across a new plant (ripe ones are always in easily identified clusters), you first need to take a photo of the patch where you found it. Most patches actually contain two closely related plants, and you’ll get a card for each of them featuring detailed drawings as well as notes about how to tell the two apart. That’s especially important when you’re dealing with near-identical plants like yarrow and hemlock, one of which is used in medicine, and one of which is best known for murdering philosophers. Using that knowledge, you can choose which plant you think it is by pointing out specific features of it with a magnifying glass. If you’re right, you’ll get the chance to harvest useful parts like leaves or flowers, being careful not to take too much so the plant will remain healthy and regrow when you’ve moved on.
One of the coolest parts of Out and About is that this identification process isn’t just relevant to the game. Every one is an actual plant, and the tips you use to identify them in the game can also help spot them in the real world (though developer Yaldi Games does caution that you shouldn’t rely solely on Out and About to decide whether a real plant is safe to pick). I can’t say for sure how accurate it all is, but after playing the demo, I do feel slightly better equipped to point out different plants at my local park. Beyond its educational uses, the detailed process of identification and harvesting is enjoyably precise and relaxing.
Learning to tell similar plants apart is essential in Out and About.
With a basket full of plants, you head into town to make some use of them. At your grandma’s house, you’re able to cook your finds into treats with the help of the town’s other residents. Cooking is an automatic process, unlike foraging, but one nice touch is that rather than cooking alone, you can get help from your neighbors, each of which has a specialty that improves certain recipes. Then, you can sell your creations to other townspeople at a stall, which is a touch more complex than in most games. Everyone who comes to buy is looking for a product that fits their specific needs, from something that’s useful for skin care to something that will ease their upset stomach. Recommending a product or two that fits what they’re looking for will get you a bonus to the sale. There’s not much interaction with the people of Portobello in Out and About’s demo, but they seem a typically likeable and friendly bunch for this kind of game.
Portobello’s residents are scrambling to rebuild after a massive storm.
Out and About is a decidedly cozy game, but what I like most about the demo is how it pushes back against the usual notions of the genre. In games like Stardew Valley, everything you do is directed at gaining money and items for yourself, giving the impression that self-sufficiency and acquisition are worthy goals in themselves. Here, everything you do also helps the town, which makes the whole process seem a lot less selfish and more rewarding at the same time. By demanding that you think more about what makes each plant unique, and even caring for their health, it also instills an appreciation for nature that cuts against the grain of similar games that see the natural world as a resource to exploit. There are plenty of smaller things to love in Out and About, from its flexible character creator to the adorable skipping animation of its protagonist, but its focus on nature and community is what really makes me eager to get my hands on the full release.
