Everyone loves a good road trip. I mean, I don’t. I actually despise long-distance travel in all forms, especially when it involves being in the company of others. But in video games, road trips are tons of fun! All the fun of the open road without the sweltering heat, awkward silences, and fighting over the AUX port.
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Road trips are not only a great narrative device for getting your cast of characters to travel across a long distance, but they’re also opportunities for both interesting character interactions and novel gameplay mechanics.
We all discover a little something about ourselves when we’re stuck on the side of the highway with a flat tire, waiting on a bench for roadside assistance. If you enjoy a little road trip in your video games, these are the games you’ll have the best time in. Hey, it beats trying to drive a sedan cross-country to get to a crummy theme park.
To differentiate these games from other games that involve long trips, they all have to primarily take place in a vehicle.
9Darkest Dungeon 2
Outrunning The Darkness
Darkest Dungeon 2
In the originalDarkest Dungeon, your activities are largely localized in the decaying lands surrounding your crummy hamlet. In Darkest Dungeon 2, on the other hand, the entire world has gone to heck in a handbasket, so there isn’t really any single place that’s safe to stay in for long. Ergo, the best course of action is to stay on the road!
Darkest Dungeon 2 is kind of like a microcosm of all the worst things that can happen on a road trip, whether it’s vehicular difficulties or passengers being at each other’s throats.
Of course, in this case, rather than blown hubcaps or music disagreements, it’s monsters attacking your stagecoach and party members actively threatening to murder each other over the smallest perceived slight. Same difference.
Speaking as someone who doesn’t like road trips, I actually appreciate this game’s choice to go on the road. Sincestress-induced insanityis a major theme of Darkest Dungeon, it makes a lot of sense to place heroes in one of the most stressful settings I can imagine.
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Death Road To Canada
A frantic vehicular evacuation to an allegedly safe place is a relatively common staple of zombie movies. It’s not really safe to travel on foot when something’s out to eat your feet, after all.
However, if you take the stress of a zombie apocalypse and add that to the general stress of a road trip, you have a scenario like a veritable powder keg, ready to explode.
Death Road to Canada, as the game’s store page so eloquently puts it, places you in charge of “a car full of jerks.”
Unlike on a regular road trip, you don’t get to choose who you travel with, so all of your passengers might have severely conflicting personalities and quirks. Too bad for you, ‘cause you still need to get everyone to safety, even if you want to strangle them.
I’ve had a weirdly high number of similarities between my experiences in this game and actual real-life friend gatherings. Even with the zombies in the mix, pointless arguments and stupid travel decisions are apparently just a universal constant when it comes to road tripping. The difference is, in Death Road to Canada, if someone is annoying me, I can leave them for dead.
7Final Fantasy XV
Cruising With The Party
Final Fantasy 15
Fextralife Wiki
Technically, every Final Fantasy game, and many JRPGs in general, involve some degree of traveling, albeit usually on foot or horseback or whatever.
This is true forFinal Fantasy XVas well, though the main difference between it and those games is just how perfectly it embodies the spirit of a road trip between bros.
You’re cruising across the countryside, the top is down, and the wind is in your hair, and while there is a destination, you can stop and get out whenever you want. Maybe a monster gave you a sideways look, maybe there’s a roadside diner with tasty food; whatever the reason, it’s your trip, your way.
I like how much the Regalia is almost like a member of the party in itself. The group is always reluctant to leave it behind, and they always take good care of it at garages and gas stations. Also, it can transform into a jet! Who wouldn’t want a road trip in a car that can transform into a jet? Think of the use during rush hour.
6Keep Driving
Just You And The Open Road
Keep Driving
The idea of taking off on a cross-country road trip as a young adult seems kind of terrifying to me, but apparently, some people have life-changing experiences out there, fending for themselves. I’ve always preferred the safety of my desk, though, which is why I just play Keep Driving instead.
Keep Driving is a good example of a road trip purely for its own sake. The premise is that there’s a music festival on the other side of the country, so you have a rough deadline, but everything that happens between departure and arrival is completely up to you.
Heck, you don’t even have to go to the music festival if you don’t feel like it. It’s the infinite road trip, a journey with no set destination!
I enjoy how relatively down-to-earth this game is compared to some of its contemporaries. There are problems on the road, but it’s all fairly mundane stuff, like getting stuck in traffic or realizing there’s a bee in the car. Even mundane problems can make for interesting entertainment when you frame it right, and Keep Driving is a good illustration of that.
5Metaphor: ReFantazio
Cross-Country To Royalty
Metaphor: ReFantazio
An offshoot of road trip stories you occasionally see in movies like The Cannonball Run and Rat Race is the objective-based road trip.
Not only are you traveling cross-country, but you have to do it fast, and you have to accomplish something when you get there. If ever there were a novel combination of concepts, it’d be that along with steampunk fantasy inMetaphor: ReFantazio.
As the Competition for the Crown necessitates visiting the country’s three major corners, a large portion of your party’s downtime is spent traveling aboard your Gauntlet Runner, a gigantic passenger ship on legs. Fantastical concept aside, though, there are still plenty of opportunities for road trip bonding and experiences.
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Even just doing regular chores aboard the Runner, like cooking or laundry, are bonding opportunities. I particularly enjoyed a little lecture I got on laundry etiquette from Strohl. Don’t forget stops at some ofthe game’s most impressive and lore-dense vistas, each of which is a veritable feast for the eyes.
4The Oregon Trail
You Can’t Beat The Classics
The Oregon Trail
If you’re above a certain age, you have almost definitely played at least one iteration of The Oregon Trail in your lifetime. It’s arite of passage for Millennials and Gen Xers, whether you played it in full-color graphics or with little green lines on a CRT monitor. Not only is it genuinely educational, but it’s one of the oldest road trip video games ever made.
Obviously, this is not a traditional road trip someone undertakes for fun. The settlers of the titular trail are looking for a place to call home, and some of them will die of dysentery on the way.
Still, it’s a trip, it’s on a road, and if you think about it, there are many elements that remain relatable today. After all, what would a road trip be without the occasional broken wheel or questionable dining decision?
I loved playing The Oregon Trail in my youth, even if I was barely literate and couldn’t aim the shotgun in the hunting minigame to save my life. Sometimes, my sister and I would compete to see who could make their caravaners the most miserable without killing them! A lot of salt rubbed in wounds during those trips.
3Persona 5 Strikers
A Japanese Travel Brochure With Personas
Persona 5 Strikers
Can we cram one more Atlus RPG in here? By gum, I think we can. The big thing that drew me toPersona 5 Strikers, beyond the obvious appeal of more Phantom Thief adventures, is that it was an opportunity to see some of my favorite characters in a new and interesting setting.
The activities of the Phantom Thieves are no longer confined to Tokyo alone; they’re spreading all over Japan.
Ironically, given Persona 5’s calendar system and the usual time constraints that come with a road trip game, Strikers actually doesn’t have any time constraints. This gives you plenty of time to take in the many sights around Japan that the Phantom Thieves stop at and engage in the occasional cute character-building side activity.
Admittedly, the road trip elements don’t significantly impact the primary gameplay loop of Warriors-inspired Persona combat and exploration, although they are rather thematically appropriate.
You’re not locked into turn-based battles anymore; you can freelytravel the Jailsand sucker-punch any Shadow that looks at you funny, a kind of freedom that’s part and parcel with a road trip.
If someone tells you they’re going on a road trip, there’s an unspoken assumption that they’re going to do it in a car that they own.
This isn’t necessarily the case, though – in Road 96, for instance, you don’t really have the luxury of driving your own car, seeing how you’re trying to flee across a border from an authoritarian regime. Thus, we see the crossover between road tripping and backpacking.
Since you don’t have wheels of your own, you need to make educated guesses on the best way to close the distance in other ways, like hitchhiking or buying bus tickets. You’re the only one that you have to care for on this trip, but your choices of actions, exploration, and refueling will have rippling consequences.
I’ve always been a firm believer that life is a series of encounters with new and interesting people. Part of what gives Road 96 its inherent replayability is that the people you end up talking to, hitching a ride from, or occasionally stealing from can completelyreshape the whole scope of your journey. You rely on the kindness of strangers, and it may or may not work out for you.
1Monster Prom 3: Monster Roadtrip
One of the recurring taglines of theMonster Promseries is, “we’re young and unafraid and ready to try.”
While this would normally refer to promiscuous activities and crime, in Monster Prom 3: Monster Roadtrip, it’s all about hitting the open road, getting to know your friends, finding cool destinations, andalsopromiscuous activities and crime, time permitting.
Monster Roadtrip is like all the best, most distinctive elements of a classic road trip, condensed down into a single board game-like multiplayer visual novel. You’ve got stupid roadside attractions, weird, possibly haunted hotels, theoccasional familiar hitchhiker, and just about every other silly distraction you’ve ever seen in a road trip movie.
What’s really novel about this game, though, is that it’s a little more introspective than its predecessors. Since it’s not a dating sim primarily, though you can get a date ending if you’re into that, it gives you a chance to have little platonic heart-to-hearts with the series’ characters.
I already liked these characters from the previous games, and I’m a sucker for incidental lore, so it’s a great opportunity.
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