Geargrave Outlands

Geargrave Outlands is a turn-based strategy game about a convoy of patched-up vehicles and the people who drive them across a wasteland of dead highways, scrap-walled towns and gangs fighting over water. You build your convoy from salvaged vehicles and parts, assign your crew to different roles, and decide how to handle each encounter. You command battles rather than steering the vehicles directly.

Build the convoy

Every vehicle is assembled from parts you bolt onto it and the crew you place behind the wheel. You might fit a ram plow to a hauler, put a sniper on a hearse’s roof or add a harpoon gun to an ice-cream truck. Changes to vehicles and crew reshape the convoy’s capabilities.

You can board enemy vehicles and take them into your convoy, recruit surrendering crews, or release or rob them. Destroyed vehicles yield scrap, while burned ones leave ash. Vehicles you lose remain behind, and their crews may not survive.

Crew and relationships

One crew member drives while others operate guns, repair the hull, board enemy vehicles or handle the radio. Assignments matter: war buddies fight well together, while a gunner, mechanic and medic can complement one another. Crew members have their own faces, histories, debts and opinions. They develop perks and perform coordinated manoeuvres, but can argue at camp or leave if water runs low or you rob the wrong people.

Raiders who surrender can join the convoy, though their loyalty is negotiable. You can also reorganize the convoy and reassign its crews as you change your approach.

Plan each battle

When an enemy appears, choose whether to attack with guns, send a boarding party or try to persuade the gang to surrender. Your convoy follows the plan using its vehicles and crew. Cap, the convoy’s robot bookkeeper, can rehearse the fight and assess your chances before you commit. You can also direct the battle round by round.

Winning with the same tactic can prompt future gangs to prepare counters, such as spikes against boarders, armour against guns or a hardliner against your negotiator. Five major factions and three regional powers remember how you treat their people, and news of your actions spreads across the wasteland.

The road and its stories

The game includes two hand-built campaigns, each set in its own region and with its own tone and story. Sector East, “Dry Tanks,” follows a stranded convoy trying to escape thirst, then leads to the Sweepers’ secret and one of four endings. Sector West, “Rescue Rudolph!,” is an alpine detective mystery with three endings; it opens after you finish Sector East.

There are 85 hand-authored encounters, more than 300 road events, a procedural generator that creates gangs between story beats, and 41 road incidents that can enter the middle of a battle. You can explore 85 locations, including ten hidden away from the road network. More than 60 vehicle types are available to fight, board and take home, including buggies, battle buses, tanks, tankers, monster trucks and walking battle frames. The world also features over 100 conversations and 34 cargo stories found in the goods you haul.

Campaign and tools

The battle screen introduces its essentials first, then unlocks deeper command options one battle at a time, including crew hands, boarding, combo manoeuvres and capstones. A guided practice battle teaches the basics. You can choose from Light, Normal and Brutal difficulty levels, and the game has 50 achievements.

Built-in mod support lets you create a folder-based mod using JSON, images and sound, with its own map, factions, quests, battles, dialogue, crew, vehicles and ending. Mods appear in the level picker as Community Mods, and the game checks them on load and identifies the file and line when something is wrong.

Wasteland humour

The setting’s comedy includes a mayor who washes his white limousine with drinking water and a cult that worships the Great Discount and treats a 41-meter receipt as prophecy. The game also lets you take out an insurance policy, with its small print delivered by radio.