Are We Dead Yet? Overland’s Dangerous Drive

“Jesus what is that?” The van rolled to a stop outside a deserted filling station. Up ahead, a spherical creature floated above the ground, tentacles sprouting from the top and waving in the desert wind. Usually, my rule of thumb with new aliens is stay the hell away, but this one was between us and a badly needed can of gasoline. “Cat. Go take a look.”

Cat got out of the van, grim determination painted her polygon face. She’d been with us for over 500 miles – by now she knew “go take a look,” meant, “go hit that thing with a pipe.” She walked up and, with her last action point, bashed it. It made a satisfying PONG sound and exploded, throwing Cat to the ground and bathing her in fire.

Chung grabbed the fire extinguisher and put out the flames, but it was no use. Cat was gone. The rest of the team finished their sweep of the area in silence. We managed to put a few of gallons in the tank and headed out, a new empty seat in the van. There are game mistakes I can live with and others I restart. This one I lived with because it was so dramatic and because it taught us a valuable lesson. Don’t hit the round ones.

I was playing Overland, a turn-based strategy game designed by Finji and available on the app store and Apple Arcade. It bills itself as a “post-apocalyptic road trip game” and that is what it is. You start on the east coast with a character and a car and your goal is to get to the west coast. It’s a simple concept and a simple game that sits atop a deep reservoir of humanity and emotion.

Between each map, when your characters stop to rest and you decide where to go next, they talk to each other through speech bubbles. Strangers say thank you for picking them up, or one character will thank another for healing them or helping them out of a jam. After we lost Cat, Chung sat on the ground and said he hoped she had found peace. Having them react with empathy to events in the game is a small thing but it adds so much depth. It makes them feel real. These are everyday folks doing what they can to get through. They use the tools at hand. The worst weapon in most games is the best weapon in this one. You never find a shotgun.

The environment and sound design complete the emotional experience. The ambient music is eerie and used sparingly. The country is divided into six biomes, and as you move from one to the next, a short cut scene plays – just a static shot of your car navigating a lonely patch of highway, no music, just the sound of wheels on road. It’s a sound that echoes in the memory. The vastness of the great plains. Overheated in the Mojave.

As you move further west, the situation gets worse, more aliens, less people and the ones you do meet are even worse off than you are. There’s no talk of the army securing a zone, or a town out there where people are thriving. No matter how many aliens you kill, there are always more at the end than when you started. At a certain point it dawns on you: this is it. This is the end. This is a game about how we conduct ourselves during the dwindling days of our existence. This road trip is a chance to take one last look around before we vanish forever, and maybe take a couple of these wavy bastards with us before we go.

It crashed a few times and deselecting things is annoying, but do yourself a favor and play through to the end. It’s beautiful and shows us once again that good stories can come from anywhere.

PS – Here’s a list of most of the items and what they do. You’re going to need it.