Headlander: Everything you need to know

Headlander is Adult Swim Games’ newest release available on PC and PS4.  Developed by Double Fine Productions, the game is possibly one of the most beautiful and refined games in the Adult Swim Games’ lineup, following up other hits such as Jazzpunk and Duck Game.

Headlander is a fairly straightforward action platformer, but there are a lot of secrets to be found across the space ships and stations you’ll explore. The game’s upgrade system also allows for plenty of customization to get the most out of your time in space. Here’s a list of some useful resources for you to use to escape Methuselah’s far reaching robotic regime.

Staying Alive

You’d think that being torso-less and limbless would make you all together helpless. It turns out, being a motorized head has its advantages. While floating around as a head you’ll be able to rip opponent’s heads from their bodies, redirect enemy fire and hazards, and possess other mechanical bodies to use to navigate and fight. As powerful as these abilities are, remember that while you’re a head, this is also when you’re at your most vulnerable. Jump between bodies whenever you’re in combat to make use of them as figurative meat shields.

How to Fight

As mentioned before, you have a few powerful options while outside of a body to defend yourself. Once you learn how to reflect lasers, you can use that ability to turn their aggression against them. You can also vacuum the opponent’s heads off their bodies to claim them as your own, but doing so opens you up to counter attack from your victim. It’s better save these options for worst case scenarios and keep to a body while you can. While doing so you can take advantage of the weapons of that body and use cover to hide. Lasers can also be angled off of walls, the higher your bodies’ security clearance, the more powerful those lasers become. Try to use angles to take out enemies from afar, you don’t want to backtrack through twenty rooms to replace a body you lost to carelessness.

Upgrades

There’s a lot of ways you can boost your character to better fight the threats aboard the stations you’ll travel. Some of the ones I’ve found to be the most useful are the ability to headbutt your opponent’s head off their body. While dangerous to the body you’re in, it won’t matter once you’ve stolen theirs. Upgrades in the defensive tree that help maintain your bodies will be useful for keeping high security clearance. As mentioned earlier, you don’t want to have to backtrack to replace a body you’ve lost due to accident or carelessness. If you actively seek out energy, you should have no problems maxing out your upgrade tree.

Seek out Mappy

This walking iPhone is your key to hunting down all the upgrades available in the game. Mappy is often found whenever you enter a new area, and can sometimes be obscured behind terrain, so be sure to keep an eye out. Once you’ve found him, just pop his head off and upload his data to your noggin. This will help when looking for vents or planning out the fastest path to return a high security clearance body to a door you need opened. Player Joey Joe-Joe Jr. Shabadoo is credited for having also provided this collection of completed maps in the game, should you need reference.

The community for this game is excellent source if you’re a completionist like myself. YouTuber Tomoch has taken the time to painstakingly create a playthrough to help new players, as well as a complete compilation of every location of every upgrade, assorted chronologically.

Hopefully this will get you through Methuselah’s monarchy in one piece. Remember that in this game keeping your head on your shoulders isn’t always a good thing. Don’t get attached to your bodies, they’re replaceable after all. Above all, have fun!