Noto buenas intenciones, me parece que tiene valentía el juego con lo que propone. Pero desarrolla todos los conflictos con un "press F to pay respect" constante. Y en los casos menos malos, con minijuegos pedorros.
La estética del juego es engañosa y sólo me resta, muy preciosista todo, con música indie en las radios y una onda wanna be punk que no llega ni a la R de "rebeldía".
Hay momentos que me gustaron igual, no todo es malo. Algunos personajes están bien y hay situaciones que general algo. Aparte el juego sabe camuflar sus limitaciones y hacer creer que es mucho más grande de lo que es realmente.
Me da pena que no funcione porque va a servir como combustible para los tontos de siempre de que la política no debería "infectar" los videojuegos. Pero por desgracia en cómo está tratada en éste prefiero mirar para otro lado y seguir esperando otra experiencia con más carácter.

Full review:
https://youtu.be/hBU-QrC5y6Y
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Positive:
Interesting approach to narration (procedurally generated sequence)
Memorable characters
Diverse locations
Many different minigames
Great soundtrack

Neutral:
Exaggerated/cringy characters
Story is heavily focused on politics

Negative:
Ambiguous advertising (“thousands of roads to freedom” is more about the random order of scenes than about choice and consequence)
Frustrating illusion of choice in many scenes
Low-res textures and stiff animations
* Framedrops in some areas

Honestly, this one is hard to review. The frequent illusion of choice killed it for me, but I feel like most people will still really enjoy this game.

The potential of Road 96 makes me wish that they just....changed some things in development. Mostly, hiring some better writers. The story is trite, and that's the hardest part. And I agree with the politics, but even the pandering doesn't make up for characters I don't care about.

It's fun mechanically how the game does randomly generate and how it plays out over time. Comparing your trip to other's friends is fun to see who did what in which order, because every journey is "different" -- and by different, I mean out of order with one another.

I'd be interested in seeing what the single run playthrough of this looks like where it's designed to get just out of Road 96, instead of playing multiple protagonists through multiple journeys.

Le pongo un 10, aun que sea un indie y tenga sus limitaciones. Me parece un juego que lo hace perfectamente, todo bien. Me encanta, que sea un visual novel en primera persona se me hace mucho más inmersivo. La idea de ser diversos personajes, me mola, debido a que me resulta una forma bastante curiosa de conocer los personajes principales más a fondos. La trama principal, me ha sorprendido bastante bien, ya que lo primero vi, pensaba de que iba a ser un juego tranquilo. Pero no, es un juego con una trama bastante bien llevada donde suele tocar problemas tan profundos, como politica, problemas familiares, psicologicos...
Es un juego que lo recomiendo, si o si.

I was really interested in this from the moment I found out about it. It ended up being a lot different to what I thought it would be, but not in a bad way. Entertaining and thoughtful in a lot of ways. I think that the promise that "no one's road is the same" is a bit of a stretch though.

Broadly speaking, the game has an overarching narrative and each time you start a new run, the characters you meet are going to be at a different part of their arcs, depending on how many times you've encountered them so far. The game picks and chooses a random event that you haven't yet seen and makes sense for the narrative based on where on the timeline you are. At the start of my new game +, I did indeed start off at a completely new event, but the one after that was one I had seen in my previous playthrough.

Nearing the end of my first playthrough too, certain methods of travel just stopped having new events, so there's a limit on the unique content. It's still fun seeing where you'll end up next, and it helps give the game a that road-trip energy that it's obviously going for. It just seems like a stretch to say that every journey will be different. Maybe throughout the rest of my new game +, my thoughts will change a little though.

The game is a little rough around the edges in some places, but it has a nice art style. The voice acting is decent enough, and the OST is fun. I will say, it seemed a little under-polished in some areas, but that may have just been me.

If Road 96's sales pitch interests you, I definitely recommend you give it a shot, since it is an interesting game, despite any flaws it has.

Man, this game is so interesting and I am really glad I finally decided to play it on a whim without really knowing what it was about.
The narrative structure is fascinating and generally works incredibly well with the story it tells, stitching together roadtrips with vignettes featuring a distinct cast of characters. These vignettes offer great variety in settings and tones and the narrative puzzle revealed bit by bit through these character moments is genuinely interesting to follow because you never know for sure what you will get with each new vignette. I really can't say enough nice things about the narrative design, structure and gameplay loop of Road 96.

So... why this score?

Well, I didn't talk about the actual contents of the game yet. Road 96 is unabashedly political through every fiber of its narrative. And therein lies the problem. I adore games willing to take on politics and having the guts to stand for something.
The politics of Road 96 are messy and not supported or conveyed by the most amazing writing I have seen around, to be generous. The chosen characters and their roles in the world are certainly diverse and interesting, but it often dips into territories you wouldn't go with as the player, lacking the meaningful application of player agency and the hamfisted parallels to the real world are played for laughs and irony for the most part but can't help but reveal the superficial depth we can expect from its handling of politics. The performances are emotional for sure in key moments, but also really do not stand out as anything but servicable for the most part.

The main issue I had around the narrative problems was the lack of reactivity or guidance from characters and the game on what my decisions mean. Disappointing a staunch anarchist by choosing the moderate dialogue option got me a disappointed one-liner but...okay? There are generally three options you get, 1. everyone for themselves, 2. fuck the system 3. go vote pwease, which seem to accumulate in the background for something...maybe? I am not sure if there are even any consequences to these flavor choices you make, maybe it's so seamless that I didn't notice, but in any case there is just this total lack of bite and reaction to every choice because of this, leaving the player in this ambigous space where they just play along until credits roll.

Maybe, that's just me. It is still absolutely worth it to play this game, I can't emphasize this enough, Road 96 fascinates me to no end and it has a lot going for it, if you are at all on the fence about it, I will absolutely recommend it, at the very least you will find a lot to like, maybe even dismissing my criticisms, in which case this game could be loved by a lot of people, I believe.

Okay, having watched all the endings now, I gotta say, I actually quite like this game. I do believe there is far, far less freedom in how the story goes as the game makes you believe, but honestly... the game made me very much believe that there was a lot of freedom until the very end - so it worked? Yea I'd say it worked. Of course, there is a lot to say about reductive political and morality systems in games, but for what it's worth, this one does alright. I really like the shaming of apoliticality, and I'm very sure GamersTM won't like Road 96 at all. It's sometimes very much on the nose and some choices are incredibly contrived, but well, who am I to judge a games writing when I played it in two sittings until very late at night. I have some problems with this game but overall I had a good time.

When I started playing Road 96, I found the premise absurd, themes well meaning but poorly delivered and the cast of characters while colorful, not particularly noteworthy. Having finished the game, my initial impression did not change but I got additional appreciation of its strength despite the shortcomings.
So instead of dunking on its heavy handed political themes I wanna instead highlight why you might wanna pick this up.

The minimalist yet colorful art-style the game uses has become somewhat common in narrative driven indie games but for some reason I never get tired of them. The rich blues and yellows used to paint different locations perfectly capture the vibe of a fleeting moment of dreamlike beauty in a road trip. While some of the locations gets a bit samey, the visual splendor of the it all saves it from fatigue. Complementing that is some striking character design which is appropriately flashy and subdued depending on the character. The random unimportant NPCs suffers from same face syndrome but I can't tell if that was an intentional creative choice. Also while facial animations are not the best, the overall scene setups and designs pulls their weight in delivering the proper emotions.
The soundtrack deserves special mention cause how perfect it is in creating the right vibes for each locations. Mostly consisting of synthwave and pop-folk, they are used to enhance or outright carry scenes. You get the soundtrack cassettes as collectibles and I wish there were more opportunities to listen to them at our own pace. It might be just my own personal tastes but I love pretty much every track and have even kept the playlist saved to listen in the future!

Usually narrative adventure games are mockingly called walking sims (something I don't agree with) cause how little active gameplay challenge they have so something that really surprised me here was the variety in gameplay activities you engage in. Off the top off my head there's 3 types of minigames that are cleverly used at various locations and in addition shooting and driving sections. These pace the experience very well and pick up the slack where the writing might fall short.
I was initially under the impression that the locations and story events would be randomly generated but that's not quite the case here. Every character a set number of events that you see them in order but the order in which you see which character's story is randomized. The most fascinating part is that you don't play 1 set character but multiple characters that interact with the handful of story characters at different points in the story and player characters can even fail!
Your actions at least appears to have an effect on the characters so you have to judge whether you want to do what's right and what's beneficial. I really like the narrative implication of this design in saying that change can only be brought about by the collective small actions of many people.

Overall Road 96 is an impressive attempt at this genre that despite stumbling at the narrative and themes, makes up with sheer charm and sincerity. I'm curious what this studio will create next.

/!\ WARNING /!\
Oh I best BELIEVE your FASCIST ASS ain't playing THAT GAME cause it don't want you TRUMP ASS

Ok... Now that I got that out of the way, I can get to the review.
Before I started playing this I was just a normal apolitical cringe normie, but after playing this baby... I just can't stand by and watch dr*mpf fuck this country up anymore (i'm european), now I get it's not enough to WANT things to change, but that you need to kill the president.
So I started playing this game a few days before the release of No More Heroes 3 and it started off pretty okay though I was kinda off the mark I thought it was gonna be one long road trip with randomly generated events like a collection of scenes.
Turns out it's a trump game and you have to get through 8 road trips and escape the country with your life because the president wants to kill all teenagers who want to leave... OK, that's cool... it's fine... I thought it was a shame because I wanted to keep my bonds with the characters and everything I had and have a chance of meeting some again later (I was cringe and apolotical but because of the game now I'm a socialist)
But no, you just meet some once or twice on the road... OK, that's cool... So I tried to die by any possible means to see how hard it was and it really was, at that point I already started playing NMH 3 and I paused it to come back to the trump game, it was a little funny going from fuckhead to fuck trump but that's ok, both games are about aliens so I wasn't out of my comfort zone.

Unfortunately, the game could not withstand my expectations.The story - it is about a political election campaign - seems very contrived and fed by clichés. The story - it is about a political election campaign - seems very artificial and fed by clichés. The "generated road trips" are snippets of story elements thrown together randomly. This also affects the game experience.The characters all have very interesting backgrounds that you want to experience; however, finding connections and experiencing the characters' adventures doesn't feel fluid and previously experienced storylines are rarely considered. This is due to the original and very experimental way the game has of explaining the story to us. Again and again you slip into new youths who have the same goal to emigrate - or better: to escape. Unfortunately, telling the story this way didn't help this game.... For story games, a random sequence of actions is simply not suitable.Additionally, the mini-games feel increasingly repetitive. Nevertheless, the backgrounds and the dialogues are very well written. The music is also good and you can quickly lose yourself in the world - even if you rarely get far.

I appreciate Road 96 for doing certain things like the road trip setting and its obvious that there's heart poured into this game, but it does seem to be set back by lack of time and resources.

Like many games of this type it advertises itself as a "your choices matter" kind of experience, and like many games of this type it seems bigger on the surface (maybe the order of encounters will have a different effect, maybe this dialogue choice will lead to a different path) but once you get to it the actual important choices are few and they just lead to 3 pre-determined endings (escaping by yourself, reform the country via elections or revolution). Certain situations also seems to have more than one way of solving them at first but then you quickly realize that they are pretty railroaded into getting you to do what the game wants you to do.

The other advertised aspect of this game is that its procedurally generated, but really that just means that the game choses an scenario at random. This system also makes for the story to be structured in a way where you're constantly jumping between different snippets featuring any of the repeating characters. Which was fine by me, I didn't really dislike that way of telling the story but I get that some people think it makes it feel disjointed.

The plot presumes itself of being outwardly political, which I don't think its a bad thing, but I also don't think that being political immediatly makes it good. Its subtle as a brick and while most of characters were alright by me you sometimes do get some akward dialogue.

In any case its not a bad experience, I had a good time with it and I can easily reccomend it to anyone who enjoy narrative driven experiences, I just wish they had more time/budget to get a little bit more ambitious with the concept.

Aunque es una forma interesante de contar una historia y puede dar para cambios curiosos de una partida a otra, se queda un pelín corto en la ejecución de casi todo.

Probablemente sea más tema del presupuesto limitado porque el potencial está ahí, pero no se exprime como podría exprimirse.

Aún así, es una experiencia interesante y, si puedes echarle el guante a un precio asequible, está entretenido.

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Although it's an interesting way to tell a story and it can make for some interesting changes from one run to the next, it's a bit lackluster in almost every way.

It's probably due to limited budget because there is potential here, but it's not as great as it could be.

Still, it's an interesting experience and, if you can grab it cheap, it's entertaining.

𝟖,𝟓/𝟏𝟎 👏 𝐑𝐨𝐚𝐝-𝐦𝐨𝐯𝐢𝐞 𝐚𝐛𝐨𝐮𝐭 𝐚𝐮𝐭𝐡𝐨𝐫𝐢𝐭𝐚𝐫𝐢𝐚𝐧𝐢𝐬𝐦
Путин или Навальный? Лукашенко или Тихановская? "Иллюзорная" Стабильность или Перемены?
Добро пожаловать в типичную диктатуру типо Беларуси или России, это первая сильно "политическая" игра, в которую я играл и это ОЧЕНЬ КРУТО! Немного политики можно встретить только в играх серии "Метро", там немного поднимается тема коррупции, причём многие сразу думают, что тут продвигается какая-то западная "повестка" про мигрантов или угнетённые расы, но про второе тут вообще ничего нет, а про первое.. ну, сомнительно, в любом случае, тут игра больше продвигает идеи "демократии" против диктатуры, в хорошей концовке вы можете привести игру к тому, что люди не захотят сбежать из страны, поэтому это не тоже самое, что было в Life is Strange 2. Не вижу ничего плохого в такой "политике" в играх, я лишь очень благодарен разрабам за это. Но даже абстрагируясь от этого всего, в игре очень интересный геймплей, ваши персонажи здесь могут умереть или их могут арестовать, очень классная атмосфера с хорошей музыкой, интересная система выживания, да, в игре очень многие вещи немного копируются из других игр, тот же Life is strange (Похожая атмосфера и персонаж Зои), игра не привносит прям чего-то уникального и прорывного, но она является шедевриальным миксом .Мне кажется, что это лучшая игра 2021. Моя оценка - 8.5/10. Всё-таки есть нюансы, например, я перепрошёл игру 3 раза (кстати, за 1 прохождение вам точно не выпадут все катсцены, так что не забудьте потом ещё поиграть в "Новую игру+) и заметил, что ваши выборы не особо на что-то влияют, от них зависит только концовка, но она не достаточно мощная, чтобы я поставил игре 9 или 10, да и изменится в ней только 1 строчка в словах рассказчика, но тем не менее это самая реиграбельная сингловая игра после какого-нить "Детройта", сами истории персонажей неплохие и дарят много незабываемых эмоциональных моментов, второй раз игру проходил вообще мой друг через мой комп по remote play, так что вы можете проходить одновременно с друзьями и делиться впечатлениями, у кого как сложилась история, да даже просто сидеть смотреть, как проходит друг 8-9 часов где-то мне было интересно. Ещё кстати вспомнил минус, что головоломки в игре уж слишком лёгкие, прям детские) Ну, я надеюсь, что будет сиквел, Road 24, типо к 2024 году и там разрабы уже добьют до 9-10. Ещё саундтрек обалденный, где-то на 7.5/10, лучшими я считаю треки "Home Call" и "Election Day", но у композитора явно есть потенциал.

Подписывайтесь на страницу Куратора в Steam: store.steampowered.com/curator/37365104/

I think all of us have, at some point, had an idea for a game concept and searched high and low only to find it had not yet been done. Yes, I know — go make it yourself. I have actually started working on my first ever video game with a very similar concept to the one that drives Road 96, and I’m delighted to see that the folks at Digixart Games have made it work better than I ever imagined. This game has been a thrill, a validation, and an inspiration.

Road 96 is a pretty high-concept work, and that makes the elevator pitch much harder to conceive. Perhaps the best description is a narrative roguelike, where finishing a run progresses the overall story and players take control of a new character for each run. The story is somewhat procedurally generated, but in such a way that each of the chapters in each run can happen in any order and events will play out slightly differently depending on what your previous characters did on previous runs. No combat here — which way you choose to act branches the story into a road trip that feels completely unique to you (even though it isn't).

The world of Road 96 exists parallel to our own, where an authoritarian president who is an obvious analogue for Trump (they even have the red baseball caps) has ruled the nation of Petria (America) for decades under an iron fist. Our story begins in June 1996, as we quickly approach Election Day in September. Presidential terms have been extended to run for ten years in Petria, so the election of ’96 is the first chance people have to overturn President Tyrak’s reign by electing the liberal candidate, Florres.

Unfortunately, through a mass campaign of years of fake news, radicalization, retraction of voting rights, banning of immigrants, destruction of the lower classes and climate change-induced drought, Petria has reached its apocalypse point. Although it takes place in 1996, Road 96 is in a way a historical fiction piece on what America would look like after 10 years under Trump’s rule.

Tyrak has built his famous wall, but it’s not on the southern border to keep Mexico out — it’s on the northern border to keep Petrians from escaping to the fictional analogue of Canada. The alt-right extremist party in charge has created a veritable nightmare of a nation, and teenagers are fleeing the country en masse as the democratic rights of adults are slowly stripped away — and most people seem to welcome it.

If teenagers are caught trying to escape, however, they are sent to labor camps (The Pits) to work until they die. The scariest part is that most parents welcome the enslavement of their children; after all, if President Tyrak says it’s right, then it’s right. This world shows America in its final death throes, and you may begin to clock more similarities to our current country than differences.

Calling the story of Road 96 totally procedurally generated would be doing it a disservice — probably better to say the structure of the narrative is procedurally generated. Each run, you take first-person control of a nameless, faceless teen that is trying to flee the country. Each run, the overall narrative progresses in accordance to your actions, since they each take place chronologically after the previous one. Your character has a stamina bar as well; consuming food or drink or resting recharges stamina while different activities cost different amounts. You’ll also need to collect money to make purchases, pay for transport or information, or to access new areas with bribes. Riding the bus the next 400 miles may cost 2 stamina and $7, but hitchhiking will cost you 3 stamina even though it’s free.

There are seven main characters that recur in the story (if you count idiot crime brothers Stan & Mitch together), but each time you meet them on a different run you are playing as a different person. In addition, they change dynamically during the story based on what you have done during interactions in previous runs. Meeting each of the wonderfully written characters this way on each run is distinct and different, and calls into stark relief how different we become when around different kinds of people.

For instance, one of my teens didn’t make it, and was killed tragically at the wall in order to save another character, Zoe, in the climax of the run. My character’s death was co-opted by the right wing media in the next run as a terrorist attack by the Black Brigade (the resistance group) while he was actually gunned down by Tyrak’s border patrol. This opened up new avenues, new dialogue, and new relationships with characters I’d met previously. On one run, you’ll know Sonya as a radical alt-right talk show host; the next she’s a drunk party girl seeking validation; the next she’s a broken woman who lives on the edge of suicide due to her inability to save a young girl’s life ten years ago.

Each run is made up of seven chapters, each scripted dynamically so that it changes depending on what your previous characters have done. The way you progress between chapters generates the contents of the next chapter; if you choose to walk alongside the road, the end of the story will be very different than if you were kidnapped by Stan and Mitch again.

This style of presentation allows for no two players to ever experience the same story, but still showcases the excellent writing and character work within each chapter. Uncovering the secrets of how each of the characters are connected to each other, to the terrorist incident at the wall ten years ago that killed hundreds of innocent citizens, and to the upcoming Election Day is exhilarating. It feels scripted and directed, but the beauty is that it is not. It’s your story. No one else gets to live it. It should be noted that in reality, there actually is not much choice involved. Playing that game a second time is basically the exact same as the first time, just with scenarios in a different order. While still great, it's very much an illusion of choice situation.

The music is absolutely top notch in Road 96. The soundtrack is comprised of original music from many different artists, all with their distinct own vibes and styles. My personal favorites are The Road by Cocoon, Chase by Volkor X, and Sonya’s Mind by Xilix, but I assure you it’s bangers all the way down. The sound mixing is incredible; the way Road 96 controls and shifts the tone with its music is impeccable.

One of my very few issues with Road 96 is the mediocre quality of some of the voice actors. The actors playing John and Zoe in particular were obviously inexperienced, and it did take me out of the game a little bit. Some voice acting, like for Stan and Mitch or Sonya, was fantastic. Overall, it’s mostly good voice work with a few standout duds. My other small issue is that textures were constantly clipping, but that can likely be fixed with a patch in the future. Another note I need to make is that I played Road 96 on PC, at 1440p 60 FPS without a single frame rate drop. The Switch version, however, as of this writing, is pretty unplayable. If you don’t have a mid-range or better PC, I’d wait on a patch before getting the Switch version. It’s rough.

I’m not surprised by the 7s and 8s that Road 96 has been receiving — I can understand that this type of game for most people would result in a “hey, that’s pretty cool” reaction. For me, this is the manifestation of my dream game. A set of narrative building blocks that you can keep continually stacking in new ways, but always in a way no one else is doing. You may know my love of the Arkane Studios games like Dishonored and Prey ; my favorite type of video game is the kind that no two people will ever play the exact same way. Coupled with decision making and amazingly written characters similar to Life is Strange or the Telltale Games, and Bethesda-like tools to build a narrative that I (in some capacity) created and still brought tears to my eyes — this is the video game I always dreamed of, and Digixart finally made it. I know this game won’t hit you as hard as it did me, but I think you’ll still find it well worth your while to play.