Headlander

My first reaction to Headlander was something close to disbelief that the core mechanic actually works: you are a disembodied human head in a thruster-equipped helmet, zipping through side-scrolling corridors and literally vacuuming the heads off androids to hijack their bodies. It sounds like a one-note gag, and the marketing leans into that angle hard. Spend thirty minutes with it and you realise it is a fully built Metroidvania underneath the absurdity, with map-gated progression, a skill tree for both head and body upgrades, and puzzle rooms that demand you find the right colour-coded Citizen or Shepherd body to pass a security door. The 70s sci-fi aesthetic, all neon saturated corridors, film grain, and a funky synth score, is executed with enough love and detail that just floating through the place feels rewarding on its own. The body-swapping system is where the game earns its identity. Different robot types unlock different zones, and the docking mechanic doubles as both combat tool and traversal puzzle. You can fire the helmet's laser to bounce shots off walls in loose bullet-hell bursts when flying solo, or pilot a heavier Shepherd guard body for tougher fights. Upgrades let you improve thrust speed, increase the vacuum range for snatching enemy heads at distance, boost health regeneration, and strengthen your laser output. The progression loop is satisfying enough that most players report hitting the credits somewhere between six and ten hours, depending on how many secret rooms they chase. That runtime is a feature, not a flaw: the game wraps up before the formula overstays its welcome, which is a discipline a lot of mid-tier action games lack. The rough edges are real though, and worth knowing before you commit. Combat can feel chaotic in a bad way: laser shots bounce off every surface, there is no jump or crouch, and busy rooms sometimes devolve into unavoidable chip damage rather than anything skillful. The two main boss encounters use both head and body mechanics well but critics broadly agreed there should have been more of them, and the final segment of the game is generally seen as the weakest stretch. Objective clarity is inconsistent too: the companion voice Earl, broadcasting from somewhere via ham radio, delivers mission directions that are easy to miss mid-fight, and the map icon system is dense enough to confuse. Post-launch patches added mid-boss checkpoints and tuned the final areas, so the roughest version of the game is no longer what you get at launch. Where Headlander genuinely excels is in its writing and world texture. The AI antagonist Methuselah, the eccentric robot civilians, the ambient dialogue from characters like ROOD, and the understated philosophical thread about consciousness and identity all land with the dry wit Double Fine does better than almost anyone. It is a studio that sells personality, and the personality here is thick. If you bounced off the combat in previous Double Fine games, that concern applies here too since the shooting is the primary verb for most of the runtime. But if the studio's sense of humour has ever connected with you, Headlander is probably the tightest mechanical wrapper they put around it in this era.

Alex · Scout Team

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