Skip to main content

Headlander review

Adult Swim's 'Headlander' is fleshy good fun, but hardly side-splitting

Headlander
Headlander
MSRP $19.99
“‘Headlander’ is a lovely dystopian 70s sci-fi game that's strange, good fun.”
Pros
  • Clever use of the genre
  • Doesn’t outstay its welcome
  • Great gameplay mechanics
  • Fun concept and execution
Cons
  • Amusing, but rarely hilarious
  • Few side quests or extras

You wake up from cryogenic slumber as a disembodied head in a space helmet. It seems like the start of a very bad dream. But don’t worry — you have a rocket booster on your neck to help you zip around, and you can take over robots by replacing the head on their shoulders.

Headlander, a side scrolling Metroidvania (Metroid/Castlevania) game from Double Fine Productions and Adult Swim Games, takes that premise and runs with it. The game is just as silly as the name suggests, though not quite as funny as you might hope, particularly given who made it. Fortunately, Headlander is an otherwise tight, charming, and fun little game that doesn’t take itself too seriously or outstay its welcome.

Pass the Soma

In the future, humanity has poisoned the Earth beyond habitability, and so people have taken to live among the stars in space stations. In order to make this more palatable, everyone has given up cumbersome meat bodies for sleek robotic chassis.

The price for immortality, however, is that everyone has been reduced to docile consumers at the whim of an artificial intelligence named Methuselah. As the last flesh-and-blood (sort of) person left, it’s your job (as prompted by a mysterious voice named Earl and a faction of rebel women) to free the human race from its dystopian numbness.

Headlander
Image used with permission by copyright holder

As a co-production of Double Fine (founded by Tim Schafer, who’s best known for his comedic writing in the Monkey Island games and Psychonauts) and Adult Swim Games (gaming spin-off of the late night stoner comedy block that gave us Aqua Teen Hunger Force and Rick and Morty), Headlander has a strong comedic legacy to live up to. It’s funny – but never as side-splittingly hilarious as both of its creators have been known to be. The game compensates for that with a story that is surprisingly earnest in its critique of media and technological alienation.

The game draws heavily from 70s science fiction classics like Logan’s Run, Barbarella, and Sleeper, both thematically in its ostensibly utopian society with sinister underpinnings, and aesthetically with its clean, white, rounded, retro sci-fi style. Wry, specific references pepper the environments and dialogues for genre fans, but aren’t so common that those less familiar might feel lost.

When a head meets a body, comin’ thro’ the rye

Being a head on a jetpack gives you a lot of freedom, but also makes you vulnerable. While you can fly through the station’s service ducts as a head, the station’s crotchety doors (calling back to The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy) won’t recognize you without a body. Acquiring one is as easy as sucking the current head off a robot with your tractor-beam-like vacuum, or shooting it off if you’ve already jacked another body that’s armed.

Headlander is [a] tight, charming, and fun game that doesn’t take itself too seriously or outstay its welcome.

Regular citizens and dogs can walk through standard grey doors. But in order to reach the station’s more secure areas, you’ll need to hijack the bodies of Shepherds, who serve as Methuselah’s security force. They are color coded in rainbow order from Red at the bottom up to Purple at the highest clearance level. Shepherds of ascending color rank can pass through doors of their color and each color below them. Their laser shots will also ricochet one additional time for each rank.

It’s an elegant system that ties your relative power level to your progression through the space. Upgrade points earned through play can also unlock additional abilities that give access to more secret areas, but backtracking is minimal. Secrets are generously scattered throughout the game, with hidden nooks and passages leading to upgrades to your abilities (like increasing your health or the power of your head’s rocket boost).

There’s a handful of side quests to occupy you. Mostly, people scattered around the station will ask you to find particular bodies for them. But these extras are strangely few-and-far between, and feel like an afterthought.

While the moment-to-moment gameplay can devolve into frenetic gunfights, the focus is more on puzzle solving than action. Headlander is all about discovering which bodies you need, and from where, in order to progress. The game automatically saves in every room, so mistakes are never punished too severely.

This breaks down slightly at its two major boss fights. Each with multiple phases, these challenges ostensibly do what boss battles should by testing together all of the skills you have independently developed over the course of play. The difficulty curve is so steep here, though, that it can become frustrating when you die in the final phase and need to repeat the whole ordeal over and over again.

Conclusion

Minor quibbles aside, Headlander is a charming game that works very well within its scope. Adult Swim and Double Fine have taken a silly premise and executed it elegantly from a mechanical perspective. Of Double Fine’s smaller projects in recent years, it is one of the most coherent. This is gimmick-driven gameplay done right, following an idea through to its natural conclusion without forcing anything more out of it.

Headlander was played for review on PC with a code provided by the publisher.

Editors' Recommendations

Will Fulton
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Will Fulton is a New York-based writer and theater-maker. In 2011 he co-founded mythic theater company AntiMatter Collective…
Is Minecraft cross-platform?
The cover art for Minecraft.

Minecraft has long reigned as one of the most popular games available thanks to its nearly endless possibilities, regular updates, and charming vibes. If you're one of the millions of players who has invested thousands of hours into the game, you've almost certainly been rewarded with limitless excitement, laughter, and fun, But what about co-op? Playing with friends is one of the greatest ways to experience Minecraft after all. But in today's gaming landscape, there is a wide variety of platforms on which people play the game, which may lead you to wonder if you can join in on the fun with pals on other hardware. Below, we'll tell you what you need to know about cross-platform play in Minecraft.
Is Minecraft cross-platform?
The short answer is yes, Minecraft is cross-platform across PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X, Nintendo Switch, PC, iOS, and Android. However, there are a few limitations we'll get into below.

Firstly, only Minecraft: Bedrock Edition supports cross-platform play. If you're using Minecraft: Java Edition on PC, you won't be able to play with friends on other platforms.

Read more
The best cozy games
Riding in a boat with Kapp'n in Animal Crossing: New Horizons.

In a world where so many games send you on missions with tense action and high stakes, sometimes it's nice to just sit back and relax a bit. That's where the cozy genre comes in with calming exploration, crafting, and decorating that give you a sense of purpose without all of the stress that comes from more action-oriented games. If that's what you're after, look no further, as we've compiled a list of what we consider to be the best cozy games you can play right now.

Animal Crossing: New Horizons

Read more
When will Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth be on PC?
Cloud,. Aerith, and Tifa stand together in Final Fantasy VII Rebirth.

PlayStation 5 players have been raving about the second part of the FF7 remake project Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth. As with the first part, it was made clear well in advance that this game would be a PlayStation exclusive at launch, however, we did eventually get Remake of the first part on PC around a year later. This gives PC players hope that the same treatment will be given to Rebirth, but the big question becomes how long will we have to wait this time? Is it possible to see it come to PC storefronts faster than its prequel, or will we need to bide our time avoiding spoilers for months on end? Here's our best estimate as to when you can expect to see Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth on PC.
What is the Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth PC release date?

The sad fact of the matter is we don't have an official release date for Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth on PC or any other platform at this time. But there is reason to at least hope that the wait won't be as long this time around. Our only clue is that the marketing for Rebirth states that it is a PlayStation 5 exclusive until at least May 29, 2024. That's exactly three months after its initial release.

Read more