When I reviewed Exile’s End, I stated that many recent platformers and Metroidvanias fail to stand out in an overcrowded market and therefore come off as extremely generic. Just one week later and ICXM Boss Asher Madan sends me the code for another game, Headlander…another Metroidvania. I downloaded the game and booted it up expecting just another standard Metroidvania styled game inspired by games of old but instead I was presently surprised by one of the most unique games I’ve played all year.
Developed by Double Fine and published by Adult Swim Games, Headlander takes you on a magnificent drug-like trip through a world where humanity chose to upload their entire consciousness to a cloud-based service and occupy the bodies of robots. You are the last living human, albeit you are just a head and you have to deal with the evil AI overlord Methuselah.
Headlander’s moment-to-moment gameplay consists of you removing your head to different bodies in order to solve puzzles and open doors. Every environment features numerous colored doors which can only be accessed by attaching your head to a robot body of that color or getting a robot of that color to shoot. This can lead to some very interesting puzzles involving body switching and using other robots to open doors and take a single-colored body that you need throughout the environment.
When you aren’t attached to a body, however, you aren’t powerless. Every ability in the game can be unlocked and upgraded either through story moments or by purchasing them with ability points that you collect throughout the game, upgrades to your power and health meter are also found in hidden places around the map. The most useful power that you’ll have access to is the vacuum which, while you’re in head form, allows you to suck off the head of another robot so you can attach yourself to it.
Upgrades that you can unlock throughout the game can range from increased suction on your vacuum to turning any object in your vacuum into a bomb. The majority of upgrades are optional, although they will end up being a huge help in the game’s later levels. Story upgrades are obviously not and in standard Metroidvania fashion you will be moving throughout the map to find upgrades that will let you access new areas previously locked off.
Headlander’s aesthetic is perfect. Designed like a low-budget seventies sci-fi movie, complete with an overabundance of bright colors, shining laser beams, cheesy puns and some of the most lovably retro robot designs in a video game. Every section of Headlander’s surprisingly detailed environments are gorgeous and while the extreme amount of lasers flying around the room in later areas can seem a little much, everything molds together into a brilliant over-exaggerated masterpiece.
From a technical standpoint, Headlander is just shy of perfect. While in some areas mild screen tearing or soft looking image quality can occur, this is very rare and the game manages to keep a perfectly locked framerate on Xbox One. The unmovable frame rate makes this game particularly enjoyable to experience as flying through the environment is incredibly fluid. Nothing in a Metroidvania feels better than swooping into a room, commandeering a robot body and taking out a room full of enemies without any technical hiccups at all.
While Headlander’s gameplay and art direction is absolutely wonderful, its Double Fine’s amazing comedic writing that brings Headlander a step above the rest. The world of Headlander is full of puns and witty humor to the point where even the doors join in. One especially memorable boss character called The Queen, who is an angry Russian head of a chess piece whose entire move set is based off famous chess moves.
The only problem with the game, however, is one that a lot of games these days struggle with, repetition. Everything you do in Headlander is repeated numerous times. Move some satellites? Expect to do it five times. Download and upload body specific data? Hmm, do it five times…for both downloading and uploading. Headlander is full of good ideas, although those ideas would have only taken a fifth of the running time if they weren’t repeated.
Summary
Headlander is a fantastic and unique Metroidvania with some incredibly fun ideas and fantastic audio/visual qualities. It’s a shame then that Double Fine haven’t crafted enough ideas to make up for the game’s padded running time which is hindered by its repetition. If you’re looking for a funny, seventies sci-fi adventure unlike any you’ve ever seen, Headlander is the game for you.
Lewis is a games journalist, freelance gaming and consumer-tech journalist. They contributed 344 articles to ICXM between 2015–2017, focused on opinion pieces, game reviews, Windows and PC, and Xbox news: has since served as Editor-in-Chief at StealthOptional and Gaming Editor at MSPoweruser, with bylines at Gfinity Esports and FRVR.