Open Roads review

What is it? A narrative adventure created by a studio that split off from Fullbright, the developer of Gone Home and Tacoma.
Release date Mar 28, 2024
Expect to pay TBA
Developer Open Roads Team
Publisher Annapurna Interactive
Reviewed on RTX 2070, i7-10750H, 16GB RAM
Steam Deck TBA
Link Official site

It may be a cliché, but surely a road trip story is more about the journey than the destination? It’s the bumps on the highway that lodge in the memory, and how they change the central characters that determine the end result. While Open Roads does follow this trajectory in theory, as teen protagonist Tess and her mother Opal navigate life’s troubles on a weekend away, its bumps barely test the shock absorbers, and their destination seems clear from the start.

Indeed, it might be said that the story behind the development of Open Roads is more momentous than the one it’s telling. Development is credited to the Open Roads Team, a unit that detached from original developer Fullbright after reports of studio founder Steve Gaynor’s toxic behaviour. From that perspective, the game’s release itself feels like a happy ending, and it’s one that should interest acolytes of Fullbright’s previous narrative adventures, Gone Home and Tacoma. Tonally, this is especially close to the former, thanks to both its slice-of-life drama and 2003 setting, although Tess and Opal aren’t so much going home as searching for a new one.

The shared DNA is felt in a story that's told primarily through objects you can pick up and examine. From the opening scene, where you guide Tess around her bedroom packing her belongings, that old adage «show, don’t tell» is on display, as each item examined adds insight into the person you’re controlling. By the time you’ve grabbed everything not nailed down in Tess’s room and dropped it into the packing box, you have a pretty good idea what’s going on in her life, with almost no direct exposition needed.

As for what is going on: Tess’s grandmother has recently died