The game's fiction posits that humanity depleted Earth's natural resources and fled to Mars in an event called the Exodus. There, scientists working for the European Space Agency modified a patrol aircraft with anti-gravity magnets, inadvertently creating the first racing ship. The ESA granted them limited funding to continue development, and from there the Solar Redout Racing League was formed, eventually commissioning tracks across the entire solar system — from the ruins of Cairo to the icy oceans of Europa. By the 2560 season the SRRL has become the most popular sport in the Solar System.
Redout is an arcade racer built around extreme speed and physical precision. Beyond conventional accelerating, braking, and turning, the game adds strafing — horizontal movement without speed loss, enabling sharper turns and chicane navigation — and pitching, which counteracts the physiological effects of changing elevation. Pitching upward on an ascending slope prevents blackouts and ship damage; pitching downward on descents counters redouts, a screen-distorting visual effect that is also the game's namesake.
Seven racing teams are available, each with a distinct handling character. Each team offers four ship classes, with later classes as flat upgrades over earlier ones. Ships are purchased and upgraded with currency earned in the career mode, and additional active and passive power-ups can be bought and upgraded to further tune performance.
The single-player career spans four event classes with progressively stricter victory requirements, faster AI opponents, and higher rewards. Events can be tackled in any order within their class. The game offers nine distinct modes: Race, Pure Race, Time Attack, Pure Time Attack, Speed, Instagib, Knockout, Arena Race, Survival, Score, and Boss. Boss mode links all five layouts of a complex together via teleporters, creating an extended continuous challenge. Multiplayer supports up to 12 players in online lobbies or two players in local split-screen.
The base game includes five racing complexes, each with five tracks; seven additional complexes were released as downloadable content. The Windows version supports virtual reality play.
Redout released on Windows in September 2016, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One in August 2017, and Nintendo Switch — published by Nicalis — in May 2019 after a delay from an originally planned Q2 2017 window. The game also released on Amazon Luna in October 2020.
Redout received broadly positive reviews on PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One. PC Gamer praised its visual and audio design and the feeling of speed, while noting it fell short on pure physical sensation. Push Square described it as "one of the best examples of the genre," singling out the boss races as a particular standout. Nintendo Life reviewed the Switch version more cautiously, finding the game well-made but criticising performance and multiplayer functionality on that platform. Metacritic ratings reflected this split, with the Switch version receiving mixed scores while other platforms landed in positive territory.
A spinoff, Redout: Space Assault, released for iOS and macOS via Apple Arcade in October 2019 and arrived on Windows, PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch, and Xbox One in January 2021. A direct sequel, Redout 2, released for Windows, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S on 16 June 2022. It was published by Saber Interactive, whose parent company Embracer Group had by that point acquired 34BigThings.