A fantastic one time experience, which only left me gushing, until disappointment hit, with my second playthrough.

For me, 2021 will be looked back on as having several games in the genre of playing it more than once. Whether that be, Deathloop or 12 Minutes. We have seen a fair few takes on this concept of playing the game more than once. IGN’s Matt Purslow put it perfectly for Deathloop that “Despite using a live, die, repeat structure, it’s best to think of Deathloop as a temporal metroidvania rather than anything close to a roguelike.” While we have a lot of these games that encourage the player to play it more than once, they all attack this idea vastly differently.

Let me talk to you about a game that had me on the edge of my seat, made me cry, and then never recaptured those feelings again. Let’s talk about Road 96

Road 96 was a surprise for me at E3, with the idea that I’ll be playing a teenager looking to escape this country, Petria and that each teen will have a different experience and way to escape than the others.

When starting the game you are given a few multiple-choice questions, before being shown a TV where the overly obnoxious host, Sonya Sanchez, is reporting on the upcoming anniversary of a “terrorist attack”. We then get a montage showing us the main characters of the game, whilst we play several non-talking protagonists. The only recurring characters from teen to teen are: Big John, Alex, Zoe, Stan and Mitch, Fanny, the previously mentioned Sonya Sanchez and Jarod.

These random non-talking teens are how we get to repeat the game over and over and why this game with several others this year has intrigued me.

Each of these characters play an important point in conveying the overall world and events, as well as what you are able to do within the game. My completion of the game will be vastly different to yours, as each of these characters, depending when and how you meet them, can hand you Perks!

Perks

Perks are unique abilities that allow the player to do things that prior to this they were unable to.

Cleverness: Opens new dialogue options. These all commonly give the player easier options or open up a few one-liners.

Hacking: Bypass doors and safes. Not as useful as I hoped, but made us work for it. I wish this skill was fleshed out more.

Lock Picking: Surprisingly useful in a wide variety of spots, especially on new game+. Wish it worked with cars, but still very useful!
Lucky Star: Given by Sonya (god I love how much they made me hate her)! Personally it felt like the most pointless perk. Perhaps it was more useful than I know, but it never felt like I used it. Maybe the game could have had a “shooting star”, so I was aware the perk was used. I would have liked it if Lucky Star was a re-roll, if the player failed rather than a small luck percentage.

Government Pass: So this Perk is partly luck dependent on how your teen RNG is, given that you can purchase the rigged government lottery tickets it’s your easiest way of making money. It also gives you unique options when talking with cops (though not as much as I had hoped when playing New Game+). If you get this Perk early on in your first playthrough, you can make a lot of money.

Omen Vitality: We’ve got a two for one here. It gives you a permanent energy boost of two and allows for feats of strength that would have used energy otherwise. Very useful if you look to escape Petria by using the Mountain pass.

My only nitpick with the perk system is that unless you play new game+, you miss out on a bunch of opportunities to use the perks: meeting charters in the wrong order, not knowing you could have done things differently. However, that’s partly the point. To escape Petria, you’re going to need all the help you can get and you could argue, the Perks are for those that went before you, thus making it easier for those that are still to escape? Maybe that’s a bit too much of a reach.

To round off perks, they offer hugely important features that you don’t need to finish the game, but offer some quality of life benefits. It would have been nice to have the Credit Card as a perk.

How does a day work?

*Map overview showing the events from the previous teens played by the player.*

So, you’ve loaded in for the first time, what happens? The core gameplay loop is to get thrown into a brand new scenario that you’ve not experienced. Now depending on where you are in the game, it can vastly change. Sometimes you’re placed into a narrative scenario, where the game is giving some exposition commonly done with using one of the main six, or more than likely Zoe. Otherwise, you’ll be with one of the main six and doing whatever hijinks you find yourself in.

The story of Road 96 is interspersed with options given to the player, do you help the revolution? Will you be a political activist and seek change from within? Or, are you nobody, looking to escape Petria in hopes of finding a new beginning?

This for me was the story - the teens that I played, some of whom escaped, some of them got caught and sent to “The Pits” and sadly one was murdered as they attempted to help Zoe cross the border. Each of the teens had a different experience and towards the end the game had thrown over 35 scenarios at me. Some of these scenarios, as mentioned are scripted, for the story to continue. On each of my playthroughs, while playing the first teen, regardless of how I played them, Zoe and the teen would meet at the run-down trailer park for the first time in the same way, every time.

These touchstones bring the world of Petria together. Sonya, starting each teen with a news report, having Fanny stick up for the teen with the police or Stan & Mitch on their hunt for Sonya’s would-be murderer. These constants that move on as each teen comes and goes, make Petria feel like there is something bigger at hand due to using the time to help the narrative.

At the end of each scenario, you’ll commonly have a few options on how you move on, each of them will cost something, whether that is energy, money or both! I tried most options, from hitchhiking most of the way, to getting a bus, walking and getting a taxi. How you leave a scenario will affect how the next one begins and plays out, except when you reach Road 96.

Escaping Petria

This was some of the most fun I had with the game. Road 96 is a game of two parts. There is the journey across Petria and the characters and people you meet, and then there is road 96, the border and how are you - the player - going to get across?

This was one of the few parts of the game that grew on me with later playthroughs. I went from trying out a few different ways on how to cross, to seemingly on my fifteenth time carefully taking into account my Energy, Money and what had I done on previous attempts.

I don’t want to detail every option but, you can climb a mountain, go underground, attempt to smuggle yourself in a truck and apply for a working visa with an interview to name a few. Road 96 from the first time you boot in, to when you are crossing the border, you have a choice and no more is made clearer than at the border crossing.

If it was convenient to play the border crossing section for several hours and really understand how the game’s working, I would have, but Road 96 doesn’t want you spending too much time in one area. I’m happy it didn’t as the game at the end of my first playthrough had me in a well of emotions. I had experienced sacrifice, success, death and after playing six teens was on my final teen (not that I knew), when I was hit with one of the most moving parts in all of my gaming experience.

More Than Words

The song at the top of this review became somewhat of an earworm, not remotely in a bad way, but I’ve probably played the song for several hours on repeat. However, at this point in my playing, my first run was all in one day that hadn’t happened yet. While the game had played that song a lot, it wasn’t explicit to the point where I listened closer to the meaning.
Buckle up as this game out of nowhere gave me Up’s opening segment and then didn’t show it again on another two playthroughs.

More than words is the tale of two people, a relationship, the good, the bad, and that sadly it doesn’t always work out. It is the soundtrack of the game and the fact that it was so left-field just hit me. This wasn’t what I expected but without moments like this, Road 96 might have missed the mark.

Disappointment

At the start of this review, I said that the magic of this game is lost and becomes a whimper of its former self when playing New Game+. The illusion that this game is being made up on the fly slowly stops happening, the fact that Zoe will be forced on you regardless of your own actions, that this is still a game at the end.

The scenarios are enjoyable to play, however, on the third time you start to feel the repetition. This is where I want to refer back to Road 96’s ending sequence. If you could have the openness of the ending portion of the game added to the whole game, what a crazy undertaking that would be. It would borderline on a sandbox with role-playing choices that this reviewer is yet to see outside of tabletop roleplaying.

Having the Perks is good, but when the game forgets you already have them and tries to give them to you again, I said to myself “Thanks, but why are we doing this if I already have it”.

As mentioned, the reason for the disappointment was that the scenarios were repeated. To explain this concept try imagining that the scenarios are split into two decks of cards. One deck being the narrative deck, the other is anything else that can happen. Each loading screen is the game drawing from a deck that you don’t know.

Graphics and Story

I’ve held off talking about these two topics for most of this review, as this game is far more of a narrative and personal experience. While I’ve seen gameplay and people playing on the internet, it doesn’t hit the same level, as using some of Road 96’s Marketing “Hitchhike your way to freedom in this crazy procedurally generated road trip. No one's road is the same!” Suggesting, yeah watching someone is great, but as it’s a narrative-focused experience based around your choices, doesn’t make for the same experience.

That said, how is the story? Well, it’s fine, I have issues, but this is a story that doesn’t revolve around the player, rather it’s based around Petria and those that live there and their struggles and stories.

The fact that each of my playthroughs started me in vastly different areas and scenarios, I do wonder what they would have done if it was my first playthrough and how that might have changed my views on the characters and story.

What I didn’t find as interesting or engaging were the words that were spoken by the characters. The voice actors were great and while I might be name biased, Alex’s Voice Actor of Angela LeBlanc did a fantastic job. The words though left a lot to be desired. Are we in the modern time so people’s vocabulary is of the present-day or set in the 1970s? Some of the characters just feel so fake due to the words they utter and how they then act. What this did was break my immersion a few times, and I was yanked out of the game thinking “WHAT?!”

The graphics were passable, very passable and if it kept to that, it would be a passing comment or not even noteworthy. What is very difficult to overlook, especially as the last experience you have is with an in-game cutscene that looks right out of the early 2000s. While playing I was constantly thinking back to that point in my life when I played the game XIII, which was also blacky and bare bones graphically but still kept me engaged.

The screenshot is taken from the ending cutscene.

However, as Road 96’s pacing is that of an FPS and a fairer comparison would be Firewatch, which was gorgeous and was just as stylized as Road 96. This is more of a wish for more from DigixArt, as this young studio grows I can’t wait to see what they next come out with!

As always you can enjoy my podcast Too Long. Just Listen where I talk in-depth about my thoughts around Road 96 with spoiler talk.