Road96Mile0 wants players to challenge their political beliefs, but its authoritarian boogeymen are too vague to be nuanced.
Two years after its release, narrative roguelike Road 96 still sticks in my memory. The road-trip drama follows a cast of kids attempting to escape an authoritarian government by hitchhiking across their country’s border. It’s a tense series of vignettes where wrong choices result in shocking teen deaths, a political slasher film where the killer is unchecked fascism.
Related Challenge your beliefs Road 96: Mile 0 is set before the events of its predecessor, further exploring the rise of its fictional dystopia. The story follows Zoe and Kaito, two friends living in the sheltered community of White Sands who have very different views of the world. Zoe is a privileged daughter of a government worker living in a fancy part of town, while Kaito resides in the slums with his working-class parents.
The bulk of the thematic work happens in more traditional first-person exploration segments, with Zoe and Kaito walking through a few set locations in White Sands. In those parts, we learn more about the authoritarian regime running the town and make dialogue choices that determine where the characters land on the political spectrum.
In an attempt to construct some difficult moral choices, Mile 0 wades into hollow “both sides” territory. Much of the story revolves around the Black Brigades, an opposition group looking to take down the government. Zoe’s forced to ponder whether or not the group is righteous in its motives, while Kaito must question if it’s too radical for its own good. But again, we never really get a sense of what the Black Brigades really are.