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Road 96 (2021) Review
3 months ago
General
I don't think i've played a narrative game that is full of hopeful moments yet hates you with every mile you travel.
As you can tell, there's no witty one-liner to make here simply because this game is full of gut punches with some hope spots sprinkled in. It is a game that tackles all the serious topics that feel like realistic interpersonal conflicts.
Road 96 is an rougelike narrative game where you play as a faceless teenager who's running away from their own country of Petria ruled by the dictator Tyrak. The game takes place in the 90's in an authoritarian USA where Tyrak rigs everything, represses protests, and has no qualms sending children to work in oil pits for profit.
You play the game by going along your road trip in which the computer picks out the next story event based on what you choose to travel. Each event is built like a standalone short story / vignette with one of the 7 main characters you interact in your journey so your goal is to try and see all the short stories over multiple runs that end in many ways.
Eventually, you hit Road 96 in which you get to cross the border and you have various means of trying to cross the border, each with different costs. your actions in the run determine how easy it'll be for your chosen teen to jump the border and leave the shithole behind.
Now the main selling point of the game is the narrative itself. It does such a good job tying all the 6 main characters together into one story and seeing how they're all connected. You'll consistently find yourself being pleasantly surprised when you connect the dots together and decide your next actions based on what you experienced even if you're playing as a different teen.
The cast is well done with some characters that stand out (Jarod, Sonya, and Stan + Mitch) as key examples) but the rest of the cast carries their weight. I cant talk too much on what each character is but all of them are worth listening to and interacting with. It is one of the games that are full of small but unpredictable twists that throw the event for a loop. One moment, you hate their guts and want them to suffer but the next you find their deeper motivations and change your opinion on them so your POVs on all of the characters are constantly changing. It feels like they're friends you meet up every so often as each one of them is uniquely flawed and is morally grey than actually being full black or white. You will walk away with mixed feelings for even the most morally black characters so every interaction is gonna make you spend your time daydreaming if you made the right choices in this current run or past runs.
Another thing i like is how subtly oppressive the game is at its core. While you're shooting the shit with another traveller, you can find yourself isolated at an abandoned McDonalds, or you can find yourself talking your way out of death. Yes, you can actually in fact DIE in this game and start a new run. (Tip: Honestly is NOT the best policy) Shit man, even calling home makes you feel bad and snaps you back into the reality of your situation.
You also have the option to make significant choices which affects the ending whether you choose to overthrow Tyrak via a revolution, vote him out (HAH!), or say fuck this and leave the doomed country. I ended up picking the escape option on all of my runs as I know that Tyrak wont go down without a fight and theres no point trying to pretend that a doomed nation has a chance in hell of recovering from a dictatorship without making a deal with another devil.
One lesser talked about part of the game is how it simplifies the experience of being a runaway teen that does not get talked often. You have a stamina meter and a wallet as you need stamina and money to travel. You refill your stamina by sleeping and eating and you get money by any means necessary wheather it be stealing, looting, or doing odd jobs. However, there's consequences to choosing how to keep your health up and your wallet full. If you do good things such as eat good food, sleep in a room, or help others, you get good karma which makes your RNG dialogue choice rolls favourable. If you do bad things such as eat food from the trash, sleep on the floor, or steal a car, your RNG rolls are against you. This is genius because it really shows how easy it is to keep circling the drain if you make a string of bad choices and hammering in how desperate you have to be to get the fuck out of Petria. Of course, if you run out of stamina, you get captured by the cops, ending your run so you have to start over with a new teen.
if you've played story-based games like the Stanley Parable, then Road 96 is no different only you get the ability to learn special skills or get new tools from your companions that you can then use in future runs to solve puzzles easier or unlock new dialogue choices. I did find myself getting annoyed at all the invisible walls that kept popping up but i can let that slide. I wish i had more aggressive dialogue choices too because as a teen, i feel that it is my god given right to tell someone pointing a gun at my head to go fuck themselves.
Overall, I STRONGLY recommend this game and you should go in blind. You will find yourself thinking about the game and how raw & visceral yet mundane the game feels from being broke, being hungry, or even getting into trouble. It is a subtly brutal game with some of the best short stories & character development I've ever played.
As you can tell, there's no witty one-liner to make here simply because this game is full of gut punches with some hope spots sprinkled in. It is a game that tackles all the serious topics that feel like realistic interpersonal conflicts.
Road 96 is an rougelike narrative game where you play as a faceless teenager who's running away from their own country of Petria ruled by the dictator Tyrak. The game takes place in the 90's in an authoritarian USA where Tyrak rigs everything, represses protests, and has no qualms sending children to work in oil pits for profit.
You play the game by going along your road trip in which the computer picks out the next story event based on what you choose to travel. Each event is built like a standalone short story / vignette with one of the 7 main characters you interact in your journey so your goal is to try and see all the short stories over multiple runs that end in many ways.
Eventually, you hit Road 96 in which you get to cross the border and you have various means of trying to cross the border, each with different costs. your actions in the run determine how easy it'll be for your chosen teen to jump the border and leave the shithole behind.
Now the main selling point of the game is the narrative itself. It does such a good job tying all the 6 main characters together into one story and seeing how they're all connected. You'll consistently find yourself being pleasantly surprised when you connect the dots together and decide your next actions based on what you experienced even if you're playing as a different teen.
The cast is well done with some characters that stand out (Jarod, Sonya, and Stan + Mitch) as key examples) but the rest of the cast carries their weight. I cant talk too much on what each character is but all of them are worth listening to and interacting with. It is one of the games that are full of small but unpredictable twists that throw the event for a loop. One moment, you hate their guts and want them to suffer but the next you find their deeper motivations and change your opinion on them so your POVs on all of the characters are constantly changing. It feels like they're friends you meet up every so often as each one of them is uniquely flawed and is morally grey than actually being full black or white. You will walk away with mixed feelings for even the most morally black characters so every interaction is gonna make you spend your time daydreaming if you made the right choices in this current run or past runs.
Another thing i like is how subtly oppressive the game is at its core. While you're shooting the shit with another traveller, you can find yourself isolated at an abandoned McDonalds, or you can find yourself talking your way out of death. Yes, you can actually in fact DIE in this game and start a new run. (Tip: Honestly is NOT the best policy) Shit man, even calling home makes you feel bad and snaps you back into the reality of your situation.
You also have the option to make significant choices which affects the ending whether you choose to overthrow Tyrak via a revolution, vote him out (HAH!), or say fuck this and leave the doomed country. I ended up picking the escape option on all of my runs as I know that Tyrak wont go down without a fight and theres no point trying to pretend that a doomed nation has a chance in hell of recovering from a dictatorship without making a deal with another devil.
One lesser talked about part of the game is how it simplifies the experience of being a runaway teen that does not get talked often. You have a stamina meter and a wallet as you need stamina and money to travel. You refill your stamina by sleeping and eating and you get money by any means necessary wheather it be stealing, looting, or doing odd jobs. However, there's consequences to choosing how to keep your health up and your wallet full. If you do good things such as eat good food, sleep in a room, or help others, you get good karma which makes your RNG dialogue choice rolls favourable. If you do bad things such as eat food from the trash, sleep on the floor, or steal a car, your RNG rolls are against you. This is genius because it really shows how easy it is to keep circling the drain if you make a string of bad choices and hammering in how desperate you have to be to get the fuck out of Petria. Of course, if you run out of stamina, you get captured by the cops, ending your run so you have to start over with a new teen.
if you've played story-based games like the Stanley Parable, then Road 96 is no different only you get the ability to learn special skills or get new tools from your companions that you can then use in future runs to solve puzzles easier or unlock new dialogue choices. I did find myself getting annoyed at all the invisible walls that kept popping up but i can let that slide. I wish i had more aggressive dialogue choices too because as a teen, i feel that it is my god given right to tell someone pointing a gun at my head to go fuck themselves.
Overall, I STRONGLY recommend this game and you should go in blind. You will find yourself thinking about the game and how raw & visceral yet mundane the game feels from being broke, being hungry, or even getting into trouble. It is a subtly brutal game with some of the best short stories & character development I've ever played.
