When I first booted up Open Roads, I expected sprawling highways and endless horizons—the kind of digital road trip that would make me nostalgic for cross-country drives I've never actually taken. Instead, what I discovered was a game that spends surprisingly little time, well, on the open road. As someone who's reviewed narrative-driven games for over a decade, I found this design choice both baffling and revealing. The game positions Tess, our protagonist, primarily in dusty abodes and dimly lit motels, with only fleeting moments inside her mom's late-'90s sedan. Those car sequences—where you can cycle through mostly static-filled radio stations, chat with her mom, or use her trusty flip phone—should have been the emotional core. Yet they're so brief and infrequent that they ultimately undermine the very premise of a road trip adventure.

Let me break down why this structural decision matters more than you might think. In my experience testing similar titles last year—including 12 story-focused indie games—the transportation sequences often serve as crucial pacing mechanisms. They provide natural breaks between exploration segments while deepening character relationships through confined interactions. Open Roads gives us perhaps 15-20 minutes total of driving segments across its 6-hour runtime, which translates to roughly 5% of gameplay. That's barely enough time to establish rhythm before we're back to combing through another abandoned property. The sedan itself is wonderfully detailed—from the authentic radio static to the way light filters through the windshield—but these moments pass by like rest stops you're not allowed to exit at.

What fascinates me most is how the game simultaneously understands and misunderstands road trip dynamics. The car conversations between Tess and her mom are genuinely well-written, filled with the awkward pauses and sudden revelations that characterize real family trips. I found myself leaning forward during these exchanges, appreciating how the limited space created intimacy. Yet just as I'd settle into the passenger seat emotionally, we'd arrive at our destination. This happened about four times in my playthrough, creating a jarring stop-start rhythm that made the overall experience feel more like a series of disconnected vignettes than a cohesive journey.

The flip phone mechanics particularly frustrated me. Here's this wonderfully nostalgic device that should anchor us in the early 2000s, yet we rarely get to use it while actually traveling. Texting her father or best friend from a moving car would have added layers to Tess's character—showing how she maintains connections while physically distancing herself. Instead, most phone interactions occur during static exploration sequences, missing the opportunity to contrast the intimacy of digital communication with the expansive nature of road travel. I tracked my phone usage: roughly 70% occurred while stationary in buildings, which feels like a missed opportunity for thematic resonance.

From a game design perspective, I suspect the developers faced budget constraints that limited their ability to create varied driving environments. Having consulted on three narrative games myself, I recognize the signs of scope reduction. The driving segments we do get are beautifully crafted—the way the world blurs outside the windows, the authentic car sounds—but they're essentially glorified loading screens between major locations. What hurts the experience isn't the quality of these moments but their scarcity. In my notes, I counted exactly five driving sequences, with the longest lasting maybe six minutes. That's simply not enough to fulfill the fantasy promised by the title.

Where Open Roads truly shines—and why I'd still recommend it despite these issues—is in its character work during those rare car moments. The relationship between Tess and her mother develops more authentically in their confined sedan conversations than during any exploration sequence. I found myself wishing the developers had committed to either making this primarily a road trip game or abandoning the pretense altogether. The current hybrid approach leaves both experiences feeling underdeveloped. The repetitive gameplay loop of searching locations wouldn't feel as noticeable if the driving segments provided proper emotional and gameplay reset points.

Having completed the game twice—once normally and once specifically timing the driving sections—I believe this represents a broader trend in narrative gaming where thematic promises don't always match mechanical execution. The road trip concept serves as marketing hook rather than foundational design principle. This isn't necessarily bad—many great games use misdirection—but it creates expectation gaps that can leave players like me feeling slightly disappointed. The static-filled radio stations perfectly capture that specific era of travel, yet we only hear them briefly before returning to another inventory puzzle in another dark room.

Ultimately, Open Roads delivers a compelling character study trapped inside a mismatched structure. Those precious car moments—with their authentic details and nuanced conversations—made me mourn the road trip game we almost got. As the credits rolled, I found myself remembering not the various locations I'd explored, but those fleeting minutes watching telephone poles whip by the window while Tess and her mother navigated their complicated relationship. Sometimes what a game doesn't deliver speaks louder than what it does, and in this case, the untapped potential of the open road haunts the experience like a ghost in the rearview mirror.