Open Roads

Open Roads is a touching love letter to grief, the breaking of generational cycles and the complexities of family relationships. Dever and Russell’s performances are at once invigorating and heart-wrenching, demonstrating a genuine passion for acting throughout the game. The interactive environment feels lived-in and authentic to the early 2000s, adding another layer of immersion to the player's experience. While the voice acting is impressive, the characters’ appearance and facial movements become repetitive around the thirty-minute mark, diminishing some of the emotional beats in the story. Overall, Open Roads is a must-play poignant experience for fans of visual novels.

Open Roads has the writing and narrative most games only dream of. I felt for and felt like the protagonist and her mom throughout the journey, sympathizing with their human struggles. The hand-drawn art blended with 3D environments is flawless, even if that’s sometimes hard to focus on with the game’s few technical rough patches. The title, though short, is full of twists, turns, and authenticity.

It’s a great thing that Open Roads is an incredibly short experience, because when it comes to actually playing it, there just isn’t much there. Thankfully, its story and characters do more than enough to make experiencing Open Roads worthwhile, at least once.

Open Roads offers a heartfelt, human story set in our world, focusing on the journey of a teenage girl and her mother as they unravel family mysteries. Despite its engaging narrative and top-notch voice acting, the game feels dated in gameplay design, lacking the innovation of similar titles like Gone Home and Tacoma. The exploration of emotions and relationships is its strength, but its gameplay mechanics and visual presentation fall short of expectations.

While some walking sims have evolved, Open Roads is stuck in the past. Its two good characters cannot offset the bland interactivity and mystery that is as flat as the game's 2D conversations.