There is nothing quite like a family roadtrip, especially accompanied by an elderly relative that needs frequent bathroom breaks. On the other hand, those bathroom breaks are useful—they provide you with the time needed to make repairs to the old jalopy you’re traveling in. Road to Guangdong captures this feeling almost perfectly, down to being forced to listen to your relative’s music.
Oil and Petrol and Tyres, Oh My!
Road to Guangdong is best described as a visual novel with driving and management elements. The heart of the game lies in the interaction between the main character Sunny and her older Aunt. After Sunny’s parents died in an accident, she returned from college in Hong Kong to take over the family business.
Just one small problem: in order to properly inherit the restaurant, she needs the blessing of her family members that live all over China.
The solution is to pull the old family car named Sandy out of the garage and help it along with duct tape and prayers. This is where the management aspect of the game comes into play. As you drive across China, you have to keep an eye on your fuel level, your oil level, and the coolant gauge. Periodically, you will need to stop and refill your oil and fuel, fix tires, and other basic maintenance.
There are garages along your route. Conveniently enough, these service stations are spaced just far enough apart that your fuel levels will be dangerously low by the time you reach one. Of course, you can always carry more fuel with you (and you will need to.) But it’s often better to fill up at the garage rather than waste your consumables since not every garage sells fuel to go.
Road Management
You will also need to keep an eye on the various parts of Sandy. The oil filter, fan belt, engine, and tyres all have health and quality bars. The longer you use an item, the lower the health bar drops. The higher quality an item, the longer it will last and the better it will perform.
If you get stuck, you can call for a tow. Doing so is expensive, and your funds are limited. Each interaction with family will give you a bit more money to help keep you on the road. The other way to make money is to pick up scrap parts from scrap yards and sell them to mechanics.
It’s an interesting concept and could make for an entertaining simulator if it weren’t for one simple fact: absolutely nothing interesting happens while driving. The driving mechanics themselves feel stiff and clunky, with the stretches of driving in between family scenes feeling more like filler to lengthen the game than something players would look forward to.
Highway Hypnosis
The landscape outside doesn’t change much, and when it does, it isn’t for the better. At one point in the game, you are tasked with driving onto a farm. If your tyre clips the bumpy road just right, it can launch Sandy onto her side with no recourse but to call for a tow.
If you try to go faster to shorten your time spent on the seemingly never-ending loop of procedurally generated cars, scrap yards, and garages, Sandy will overheat. And when Sandy overheats, your aunt is the first person to inform you that something is wrong with the coolant. Mechanically speaking, driving too quickly wears out Sandy’s various components much faster. You have to find a balance between speed and efficiency.
Pop-Art Portraits
Road to Guangdong is a visual treat. While the graphics are nothing groundbreaking, the colours are reminiscent of the pop-art market. Some of the backgrounds and set pieces look like a moving Warhol painting.
Road to Guangdong uses colour well. Flashes of light draw your eye to any problems with Sandy while objects you can interact with glow when your cursor hovers over them. When you stop at a scrap yard, the health of parts available to you is immediately apparently by the shades of their backgrounds.
Greens indicate the part has a lot of life left in it. Yellow warns you to keep an eye on the part and be ready to replace it soon. If a part has a red background, it’s not worth the space in your inventory.The art-style reminds me of something you might find on itch.io, but the use of colors is worthy of praise.
Family Matters
The heart of the game lies in the interactions Sunny has with her family. The characters are believable and charming. By meeting family members and completing tasks, Sunny can acquire the secret recipes of the Tong family for use at her restaurant. In the course of completing these tasks, Tong family secrets are unveiled.
Some secrets are mild, like a younger cousin hiding her favorite chicken in the kitchen cupboard so it wouldn’t be slaughtered with the rest. Others are more impactful and create a sense of drama.
Interacting with family is where the visual-novel aspect of this game comes into play. You select from several choices, and certain options will unlock other dialogue options later. Each encounter has a good and bad outcome, although it is easy to get the “good” outcome.
Jack of All Trades, Master of None
Road to Guangdong has an interesting premise but its core game-play is flawed. The main story is interesting but not enough to warrant four or five hours of clunky driving and tedious management.
The game arrived with a lot of promise, but too many are poorly executed. It’s best we leave RtG as I so often found myself in game: waiting for a tow on the side of the road.
What are your thoughts on the mechanics of the game? Where could it be improved to make the experience more appealing?
Review code provided by PR