A new project from the creators of an art adventure about the First World War 11-11: Memories Retold from a family company Digixart tries to play on the field of political manifestos, telling a procedurally created story about the fate of a small state – Petria. In this small eastern country, elections are approaching, where the pro-democracy activist Florres and the time-hardened dictator, Tirac, are fighting for the presidency. Against the background of this confrontation, somewhere in the shadows, a terrorist black brigade is operating, and ordinary teenagers are trying to escape from the country, using all possible options for crossing the border.
Although the game is presented as a “unique adventure” with a unique experience and experience, in reality these words are no more than ordinary marketing. Road 96 accidentally creates only food in garbage cans, the sequence of meetings with the central characters and the time of day when certain events take place. After completing the game twice, you can see all the stories of the characters and feel all the available content. In one playthrough in the six-chapter period allotted by the game, you can bring only a part of the possible heroes to the final development.
Road 96 rather one-sidedly tells the story of a totalitarian state, where the rebels are always “Freedom Fighters” who have been framed, and the police and even the press bought by the dictator will go over to the side of the people a little more. It is only natural that teenagers seeking freedom and life abroad will face beatings and labor camps from local authorities. The solution to remedy the situation looks very modest: you can spoil the posters of competitors and leave inscriptions on the walls of the cave near the border. All other actions that could affect the alignment of forces and the plot do not in any way affect a fairly linear scenario. You can hand over the meeting place of the black brigade by calling on the phone, but this will not affect the story in any way. And the money received during the passage simply has nothing to spend, not counting food and a taxi to the border. You can try to sabotage the mission of transporting the daughter of the Minister of Oil and Gas with secret documents abroad, but even in the event of her stupid death, the underground will have copies.
Digixart quite unambiguously drowns for the overthrow of the dictatorial regime and revolution, turning Road 96 from an adventure sandbox into a fairly straightforward propaganda leaflet. No gray morality or “everything is complicated” status. Perhaps I would not focus on this if the authors did not insist that Road 96 is a game about personal choices and decisions. If you cannot play on the other side of the forces and all your freedom and random generation is the aforementioned appearance of food in garbage cans and a change in the time of day, then it is difficult to talk about a unique experience and personal journey.
Road 96 is divided into six chapters. At the beginning of the chapter, you might choose a runaway teenager who has a cash supply, a level of fatigue, and is at some distance from the border. Further, your fugitive (or fugitive) meets one of the many heroes, each of which is somehow connected with other characters. There is a body-positive female police officer trying to catch a black brigade and find her son, and a boy Alex, who is trying to solve the mystery of his parents’ disappearance in exchange for helping terrorists, and two funny robbers who dream of protecting a local TV star from a mysterious killer, and a trucker who somehow connected with the brigade, and the daughter of the Minister of Oil, striving with secret documents to the border. Each meeting reveals the characters from an unusual side, offering unexpected events or mini-games, ranging from analogue pong and table hockey to racing on a serpentine with high traffic.
Occasionally, meeting heroes unlocks perks, such as quick wits and breaking into equipment or locks, which apply to future fugitives. This allows you to clean out safes or successfully respond in dialogues. You only meet a few characters in one journey before deciding which way to cross the border. For future fugitives, the used opportunity will be forever covered, be it an underground tunnel, a mountain serpentine or a bribe to border guards. As soon as your hero has passed the border, and this happens almost always, even if you made the wrong choice, there is a news release with a rating of politicians and the choice of a new character to escape from the country.
