I’ve played a few games about roadtrips recently. It wasn’t intentional, though I do love the idea of games about journeys, they all just happened to land in my lap at the same time. First up was Overland, a turn-based tactical post-apocalyptic game about travelling across a bug-infested America. Then there was The Crew, in which I competed with Brendan in a race. That also took me across the US. If you’d rather escape the US, check out the excellent Death Road to Canada, which is funny, short and sweet…with lots of guts and headshots.
And there’s Jalopy, a game about car maintenance and travelling across the former Eastern bloc. Finally, I spun the Wheels of Aurelia, the most interesting of the three in many ways. That’s a game about the conversations you have with people as you drive, rather than the driving itself.
Alice isn’t here to remind me what “news” is so I’m going to tell you about something which I find infinitely entertaining about Jalopy [official site]. It’s nothing to do with the game itself and everything to do with the ongoing development Q&A Greg from MinskWorks is running in relation to the game.
It’s the back seat. The back seat has been the focus of so many questions that at this point it would be the first thing I would suggest for a Jalopy Q&A drinking game. There’s been the ongoing drip drip drip of questions asking whether the back seat be used for something. But THEN that transitioned into questions/suggestions about how to use the back seat so that people stop asking whether they can use the back seat for something and now, finally, with the addition of filler objects in the back seat to block it off as of 25 July, my favourite question of all:
Something that happens every now and again is I try to play Jalopy [official site]. It’s the driving game where you’re tasked with keeping a dilapidated old car roadworthy as you go on trips across the former Eastern bloc.
I really like Jalopy, but I don’t think the game and I are a natural fit because terrible – or at least non-great – things seem to happen a lot each time I play.
Last time I ran out of momentum to go up a hill but an angry AI driver behind me meant I couldn’t go backwards. In the end I parked on top of that AI driver, abandoned my uncle in the passenger seat and walked off down the dual carriageway.
Fancy a little weekend getaway? Get off Teletext and turn to Jalopy [official site], the roadtrip simulator formerly known as Hac. The latest update on Jalopy’s journey through Early Access has added a whole new country, Hungary. The full journey across Europe is still a good few countries short but you can also now keep yourself busy by repainting your dinky little car and raiding scrapyards for spare parts.