Developer: Mad About Pandas
Publisher: Mad About Pandas
Genre: Adventure, Raisin eating simulator, Point & Click
Platform: PC (Reviewed), Mac
Release date: *In production*
Find the game here: http://hitchhiker-game.com/
Hitchhiker – First Ride is a prototype Humble Bundle exclusive that is in development by Mad About Pandas. I recently stumbled across this title whilst traversing the Humble Trove to see what treasures I could dig up. At the time of downloading, Hitchhiker was free to all Humble Bundle Monthly subscribers.
I read through the game description and was promptly drawn in by the mystery and uniqueness that surrounded it. Here is a little snippet of this text, ‘You’re a hitchhiker on a strange journey, unable to remember who you are or where you’re headed. Something in your recent past has stolen your memory— but what?’ After reading this I was simply intrigued and had to know more and uncover the truth.
The gameplay was extremely basic, not necessarily in a bad way, but the whole game / experience was controlled via a mouse. I have to call this an experience rather than a game due to the lack of engagement that it offered throughout. As the story begins, you sit quietly next to a stranger and begin taking in your surrounding and assessing your situation. As things continue for a few minutes you notice that some things are not as they first seemed.
Little notes and clues hidden around the car keep you busy whilst you slowly build up conversation with the raisin loving stranger. After some more times passes you realise that the road runs in a never ending loop with things becoming more surreal as time goes on. The nature of this game is very though provoking. Where am I going? Who is this guy? Am I in danger? Do I trust him? And much more.
The graphics are fairly simple but are portrayed beautifully with the warm colour palette which reminded me a lot of Firewatch. The rolling hills, gorgeous sun rays and intricate details inside the car. The game’s atmosphere is driven heavily by its sound effects and voice acting. From opening the car window to hear the wind whistle past to watching the driver change the radio station and then devour a raisin, these little details all add to the short story. The voice acting for the driver is very good, the high quality sound alongside the clever dialogue build up the character’s personality and makes you even more unsure whether to trust him or not.
The controls for the game are very basic as I stated earlier. You are left to freely look around the car, clicking on items, buttons and objects whilst the conversation isn’t flowing. You use your mouse to choose from a variety of responses to the driver’s questions which have affect how the storyline plays out. Certain clues will provoke more dialogue which simply make the situation even more confusing and make you really question your choices up until this point. Like why do you have a picture of me in your car man… why… It’s really not ok.
Although not usually my cup of tea, I really enjoyed this experience, although the ending did leave me even more confused than I was when I first started playing… At the end of the game we can see that there are many more planned experiences to come and I will definitely be trying them out once they become available.
I feel somewhat reluctant to mark the game as low as a 7 out of 10 because it has achieved what it was trying to do very well, however, I would have loved to have seen more content, more options and more paths to go down. This one is definitely worth keeping your eyes on for the future, there is a lot of potential here… It’s going to be raisin some eyebrows, that’s for sure…
Hitchhiker – 7.0 out of 10
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- Scorpio
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