Road 96 Reviews
A road movie told in multiple border crossings and a narrative game to remember.
Road 96 is a fascinating and frequently tense adventure that manages to keep its story on track despite the odd bump in the road.
A beautifully structured, poignant, procedurally generated road movie, that's packed with character and intelligence.
Road 96's memorable character moments are overshadowed by a central narrative that requires you suspend your disbelief far too often.
Yet, I can’t help but feel entranced by Road 96’s framework; the depiction of a journey as being a bunch of moments. Moments where you dig into a character’s psyche or just have fun playing air hockey. It’s lightweight, effective, and I can’t think of another place where it’s this well-executed. If you’re willing to stomach the rough patches and politics, there’s a rich game within. One that explores how people affect and are affected by the world. Personally, I think it’s worth the trip.
Road 96 is an adventure that will delight those who put storytelling before gameplay. Good dialogues and situations, varied, with many minigames... It's playable and has some interesting ideas, though it often leaves the feeling of being somewhat corseted.
Review in Spanish | Read full review
Road 96 is an adventure game that’s stuffed with fascinating characters. Everybody has a story, and the game does an excellent job at weaving those stories together in an interesting way. The use of music and the game’s art style also helps to elevate the experience. Road 96 is a bit bogged down by some UI issues and framerate drops, but that didn’t stop me from really enjoying the complete product.
Inglés (EE.UU.) Road 96 becomes, thanks to its fine writing and its ability to make you think and reflect, one of the best independent video games of 2021. An excellent journey of encounters with your ideals and, above all, with those of others. Road 96 becomes, thanks to its fine writing and its ability to make you think and reflect, one of the best independent video games of 2021. An excellent journey of encounters with your ideals and, above all, with those of others.
Review in Spanish | Read full review
Road 96 is a brilliant and clever take on choose-your-own-adventure game. Thanks to its complex, but coherent narrative which works on multiple runs, Digixart succedes in telling the story of pride, revolution and hope through intimate moment and a interesting cast of characters.
Review in Italian | Read full review
Road 96 tells a poignant story of those trying to escape a corrupt and dangerous country through great gameplay and multiple playthroughs.
I like premise of Road 96. It sets you up for endless adventures on the road, where each situation can either get you miles further toward your goal or thrown into the slammer … or worse. While you’re vulnerable, your destiny is in your hands.
This political road trip is rendered an exciting and entertaining time by its cast and the deliberately piecemeal nature of its storytelling, rather than the story itself.
Road 96 is a politically charged piece of interactive art. Its themes of opposing fascism are depressingly relevant and conveyed through charming and funny characters. While the voice acting leaves a lot to be desired, this is a trip well worth taking over and over.
Much like the real world, everyone’s hopes and dreams are different, and it’s this uniqueness that makes them so undeniably beautiful. It’s a poetic struggle, and stopping to appreciate the instances of silence on a road filled with tragedy and heartbreak helps Road 96 feel like something I’ve never played before. Road 96 feels like an experience created by a studio that understands the fragility of the world we exist in, seeking to project these issues onto a fictional world where comparing them with our own is all too easy. Subtlety isn’t the objective here, and by pulling no punches, this game manages to say something well worth listening to.
A small amount of texture pop-in aside, a very strong visual style makes Road 96 a delight to look at. Striking character art enunciates facial features, while environments and background vistas look beautiful. With a great soundtrack to boot, the game has an incredibly strong style. When the characters you meet along the way are just as striking in their conversations and political and social beliefs, Road 96 succeeds at weaving multiple tales through the lives of teens that just want to get the hell out.
On the whole, though, Road 96 remains a genuinely innovative game. It’s approach to storytelling and narrative branching is unique. Despite a few relatively minor issues, playing Road 96 is an engaging experience. The moral ambiguity of its characters and their choices feel true to life, even if the game’s conceit is a little less compelling.
Deeply emotive, intimately crafted and bursting with freedom, Road 96 takes interactive storytelling to a whole new frontier and provides players with a timely reminder that developer Digixart is one of the most underappreciated studios in the industry today.
Developed by a small team of about fifteen people, Road 96 is a narrative and artistic success. The title charms from the first moments with its mesmerizing atmosphere, its exotic environments and especially its characters as colorful as the game. Relying on procedural storytelling was a risky bet, but brilliantly taken up thanks to a mastered, funny and touching writing, carried by interactive gameplay and intelligent mechanics.
Review in French | Read full review
Road 96 is a brave step forward in the world of narrative-driven video games. The snippet style structure superbly interweaves the diverse cast of characters creating an incredible journey through an authoritarian world. Although there are performance issues, this is an experience like no other and a must for fans of story-based games.