Out and About wears its “wholesome” inspirations on its sleeve, right down to the word appearing on its logo. Its Steam Next Fest demo has all the bright colors and cheerful local people you’d expect of the genre, but the core of the game is surprisingly realistic, asking you to correctly identify various real-life plants.
At the start of the demo, a storm destroys the town where you’re visiting your grandmother. On your way from your campsite you meet the local forager, who tasks you with finding plants to heal an injured resident. Developer Yaldi Games says the game contains over 100 real-world plants; each one you find grows next to one that looks very similar. Some of these similarities are no big deal–the consequences of mixing up chamomile and daisy are fairly minor–but others have toxic lookalikes, like hemlock and yarrow.
The plant identification mini-game is pretty simple: after taking a photo of your finds (alas), you’re given two cards with clues to each plant’s identity. Verifying which plant is which involves clicking around on the plant until you check the various details listed on the card. Then, you can harvest the plant, taking care not to take too much of its flowers and leaves. You’re also tasked with sorting the plants you’ve collected, which presents a slightly harder identification game that only gives you bits of cuttings and less clues. None of it is too taxing, but I really enjoyed studying the game’s renditions of real plants and learning about their uses.
You use the plants you’ve gathered to craft–in the demo, you make a stinging nettle soup, a green I’ve sometimes seen at the farmer’s market and never understood why people buy, and which I am now really curious to use; thanks, video games! You sell the stuff you craft at the local market, where customers come to you with various needs that can be met by your snacks, balms, and medicines. Again, it’s not too hard, but it’s fun to think about what might be best for the townsfolk from your stock. Yaldi writes that “All 150+ recipes in the game are real, and we'll give you step-by-step instructions on how to make them at home,” which sounds very cool. (The game also opens with a giant-font warning that it is not a guide to real-life foraging, which feels like a very necessary caveat.)
Aesthetically, Out and About looks like the kind of game I tend to find a little too twee, but your mileage will vary there given your own personal tastes. In a press release, Yaldi described itself as having "a mission to craft hobby games infused with real, actionable knowledge that enriches players' lives." I’m intrigued by that claim to fidelity and really enjoyed what I experienced of it in the demo. The full game is set to release later this year.
