At first, I thought it was too loose and open-ended to elicit any deep feelings.
Dude, this is a game that goes places.
Before we get to poor granny, let’s take stock.
It’s day one of your trip, and you create a simple character.
Maybe you’re unemployed, or a part-time car mechanic.
I chose to be a student (more options unlock when you complete the game).
You also choose some items to bring with you.
Maybe mum’s care package, with its sensible jerrycan of gas?
I took the case of beer and my prized guitar.
All this squeezes into the boxy inventory of your car’s boot.
Unlike the other vehicles on offer, it can hold four passengers.
This, for me, would become massively important.
The actual driving is (mostly) done automatically.
It’s like if the bloke fromNeo Scavengerowned a station wagon.
Each item is useful in its own way.
But you might not see how until you get into a scrape on the road.
“ABANDONED CAR,” it might say, before you approach a rusty old wreck.
Or “ROAD KILL” before bringing you to a halt in front of an unidentifiable animal corpse.
Speed cameras, cops, tailgaters, even arguments between your hitchhiking companions qualify as events.
Some of them made me laugh out loud.
“BEE IN THE CAR” deadpans one pre-battle message.
What unfolds is a kind of card-based battle.
Some polaroid snapshots hang from your rearview mirror, each a draggable skill that will neutralise an incoming attack.
It’s a simple enough game of matching icons and avoiding status effects.
Red gasoline attacks will lower your petrol tank.
Green social attacks will lower your personal energy.
Blue durability attacks will put a dent in your car’s physical health meter.
Those items from the store will help.
You might also get status ailments as you travel.
It meant any future attack would do double damage.
Normally, you wait for this headache to pass.
But I had been carrying aspirin from the beginning of the trip precisely for this moment.
These hitchhikers slot into the car seats and offer extra skills to use in battle.
They also level up alongside you in interesting ways.
Another passenger, the Mechanic, will smoke any cigarettes you leave in your glove box.
These are thematic annoyances that give the game its flavour.
But there is less intentional friction when it comes to managing inventory.
Examining and swapping skills can also be a chore.
This periodic pushing of the eject and shuffle buttons became, for me, a kind of ritual.
It adds absolutely nothing to your stats.
It offers you no pre-battle benefits.
And yet I felt compelled to prod my finger into this chonky pixel machinery every half a dozen songs.
I think I’m a little bit in love with this thing.
It’s unexpectedly heartfelt at times, too.
The game’s open-ended rhythm reflects the forking paths of want that crop up in any road trip tale.
At one point, I received a letter (somehow) from my grandmother.
She wrote that she was dying.
She wanted to see me one last time.
Okay, the quest was titled “Inheritance”, so my money-starved pockets led the way.
But when we reached grandma, she blessed me not with cash, but with a plot of land.
It was way back west.
Just a few miles from the one horse town I started in.
It’s implied that grandma died shortly afterwards.
I ended up staying in that midwestern city far longer than anywhere else.
I took temp job after temp job at an employment office, my negative debuffs stacking up.
I was tired (energy bars can’t be refilled).
I was hungry (energy costs increased by 1).
I was dirty (hitchhikers gain less XP).
In another game, this might feel like manipulating the game’s systems.
But here the soulless gig economy stopover felt appropriate.
Two of my three buddies have gone their own way.
We were broke, knackered, low on gas, and even lower on spirit.
I drove across the country for this?
I sold my guitar in a pawn shop in Bumfuck, Nowhere…. FOR THIS?
Three days pass without us driving anywhere.
Just: sleep, work, sleep, work, sleep, work.
I have given up on that dream.
Not out of time constraints, but because I have become dedicated to roleplaying dejection and loss.
Dude, my grandmother just died.
But her last wishes remain.
She wanted me to go back home.
To find that plot of land and see what I can do with it.
The calendar says I have two whole months to get there.
I could take my time.
We could see the country, go on hiking trails!
The road trip is not over yet.
But right now, in the city, I’m not even thinking of that.
I just want to be back on the road.
I rev the engine.
I draw a red circle around a city to the north that I know nothing about.
You were working so hard!
The dog behind me watches in the rearview.
Time to go home.
