[h2]Overall: 9/10[/h2]
[h3]Story:[/h3]
On paper, the "goal" of the narrative is to get a tent, a ticket and arrive at a music festival before the Summer ends. However, in practice, this game is really a prime example of when the journey is sometimes more important than the destination. That's because the story is less about a traditional, tightly structured plot and more about the general experience of taking a long road trip during a transitional period in your life during the 2000's.
For starters, before each run, you establish the protagonist through a handful of personal aspects like their name, whether they're male or female, what their background/occupation is, how their well their relationship with their parents is, and pick the starting kit that you'll take with you. The background choices you make are particularly significant because they give you different starting traits and help establish what your character's life was like before setting off. Still, the character creation choices are pretty small in number, and they only establish the base foundation for who [i]this[/i] particular version of the protagonist is so you can easily switch things up between runs.
It's also nice how the 'relationship with parents' feature is more than just flavor, since it can affect whether you can rely on your them for help if you get into financial trouble on the road. Furthermore, I like how the protagonist's real characterization comes mainly from your choices and interactions with hitchhikers. They're not presented as some exceptionally talented or heroic individual; they're essentially a young person who has a car, a little money, and a lot of open road ahead of them. It's a good fit for this game's coming-of-age themes and makes the experience feel much more personal, since the protagonist's personality and outlook are gradually shaped by the experiences you have along the way.
Lastly, I really appreciate how although the "goal" is to make it to the 'Way Out Festival', that's not the only ending that you can reach. You're given the festival objective at the beginning every time, but as you meet hitchhikers and encounter new opportunities, you can pick up entirely different questlines that can eventually become the conclusion of that run. Some of these endings can even influence what becomes available to you in future runs, including new starting gear + background/occupation options, which makes the narrative feel like something that expands alongside the gameplay rather than repeating the same journey toward the same destination.
[h3]Gameplay:[/h3]
I'll be honest, the gameplay took a while to click for me, and I think that's due to how I initially viewed it as a cozy driving game with weird turn-based combat before eventually accepting it as more of a road-trip management/strategy RPG kind of vibe. That's because the biggest part of the gameplay loop is the road-event system. As you travel between locations, things like potholes, traffic, animals, and other hazards all appear as turn-based encounters. However, each encounter presents different threats to things like your durability, fuel, cash, and energy depending on the nature of the obstacle, and you have to use skills or items purchased/obtained to clear those threats. Basically, you're figuring out how to minimize the damage taken each turn and make it to the next stop without completely draining any one specific resource.
At first, you're mostly thinking, "How the hell am I supposed to deal with these icons?" Then you start thinking, "How do I preserve my resources?" And eventually, it's like, "Okay, if I pick this person up, take this route, stop here to work/buy stuff, save this item, etc. I can probably save this run from certain failure later." That's when the gameplay starts feeling less like a collection of disconnected mechanics and more like an actual road trip where you're improvising your way through whatever happens.
Furthermore, you choose one of three cars at the start of each run, and I think it's really cool that each one is built around a different set of trade-offs, so choosing a vehicle (should) changes how you approach a run rather than being purely cosmetic preference. On top of that, it's really clutch how your car upgrades save across runs, so if you end up failing, at least it doesn't make you start all the way from scratch.
Lastly, the hitchhiker mechanic is one of my personal favorite parts of the gameplay, as each person you pick up acts like a temporary party member who provides their own unique skills and passive effects during road encounters. However, they aren't just useful tools, and since their individual personalities and quirks can also create problems or impose additional challenges, it means you have to weigh their usefulness against the inconveniences they bring before letting them hop on in.
[h3]World:[/h3]
I really like what the world design does with a relatively simple structure, because even though you're always moving from left to right, there's constantly changes in the background to keep the journey visually interesting. As you travel, you can pass through forests, deserts, mountains, cities etc. so the scenery rarely feels like it's repeating. A big part of that comes from how the backgrounds are procedurally stitched together based on the surrounding terrain and the type of road you're traveling on, meaning you're not simply driving past the same looping backdrop over and over again.
The procedural map also means the actual world isn't identical between runs. Yeah, there are some consistent major landmarks/geography, but smaller towns, roads, and routes can change, which gives each trip a slightly different structure. So, despite the "always driving to the right" presentation, I wouldn't really call the level design linear since the navigation is separated from visual movement. The map gives you fair choices in every direction, while the side-scrolling road view provides a consistent, but constantly changing representation of that journey. It works really well, and it makes the world seem much more dense while also doing a surprisingly good job of making each road trip feel more immersive.
[h3]Visuals:[/h3]
The atmospheric pixel-art style graphics/art direction is one of this game's strongest aspects, especially since there's a surprising amount of detail in the cars, characters, roadside objects, weather effects, and especially the backgrounds. The visuals also uses layered backgrounds, so things like the forests, mountains, cities, etc. move at different speeds as you drive, and it makes the simple side-scrolling perspective have way more depth due to how it dynamic and lively it is all presented. There's also a strong analog/early-2000s visual identity running through everything to stay true to the setting, which I appreciate. Pretty much every UI element reinforces that pre-smartphone era vibe, and it's just one more subtlety that makes the presentation feel cohesive and true to the era it's set in, rather than feeling like it's just using pixel art as a cool aesthetic.
[h3]Music/Sound Design:[/h3]
I think the both the OST and the sound design are good, but I don't love either one in particular, to be honest. The sound design complements the overall experience very well and I respect it for making the car, dashboard, encounters, and world feel immersive and lived-in, but it simply never grabbed my attention or felt really noteworthy since it's more of a subtle glue to the whole experience too.
Additionally, the music is objectively well-curated and fits the setting/vibes extremely well, but I wasn't the biggest fan overall as it leans heavily toward indie rock, shoegaze, and more mellow alternative stuff, which just isn't the kind of music I personally keep in my rotation. It doesn't ruin the game by any means, but if that's not you're flavor of music then it's obviously not going to add to the experience in any positive ways.
