Game: Road to Guangdong
Genre: Adventure, Simulation
System: Nintendo Switch (also on Steam, PlayStation, Xbox])
Developer | Publisher: Excalibur Games | Excalibur Games
Age Rating: US E | EU 3+
Price: USD $24.99 | UK £20.99 | EU €24,99
Release Date: August 28, 2020
Review code used with many thanks to Excalibur Games!
Visual Novel + Driving Simulator
Road to Guangdong considers itself to be a story that follows your character, Sunny, and her experiences on a road trip with her grandmother but spices it up with some driving simulation. This road trip is to visit relatives throughout China to gain recipes that can be used to revive the family diner and entice customers to come back to the restaurant. A car that has been in the family for quite a while, which they named Sandy, is going to be used on this road trip despite not being in the best shape so this means you have to keep an eye out on issues and potentially costly repairs while on the road.
Homage to the ’90s?
The graphics of Road to Guangdong are supposed to be playing up a 1990’s theme. From the pictures on the Nintendo eShop, it seems like a game that wants to give players a 90’s throwback. The colors are definitely spot on but the throwback vibe while in-game feels more like an excuse for clunky mechanics and an almost unfinished feel to the graphics at times. It is incredibly difficult to turn the camera and be able to look at something to be able to select it, such as the keys to turn on the car.
Car Maintenance 101
A large part of this game is maintaining Sandy to make sure that the car will continue to take you where you need to go. You have to navigate to different parts of the car, which is a real chore with the game mechanics, and make sure that there is enough oil or petrol because if there isn’t, you are not able to take Sandy out. If you go to fast, you may have coolant problems and there’s clearly a problem starting out with the air filter since it shoots out dirty puffs of air when the car is running. You do not really need to know anything about car maintenance, though, as the game tells you what you need to do and what problems there are.
“Driving”
Here’s my big thing about Road to Guangdong: no matter how much I change the sensitivities and options, it is impossible to drive the car. The bottom of the screen says ZL/ZR for go/stop but this does not work. Sometimes pushing ZR would make the car move and ZL wouldn’t do anything. You have no idea where you are supposed to go. Steering is incredibly hard and the car does not respond to the controls as it should. I spent most of my time in the game stuck on a light pole or wall, with no way to reverse no matter what I tried… Not that it mattered though because I spent so much time stuck that I constantly had to get out of the car and refill the petrol because the car used it all up with me trying to get back on the road. The driving mechanics are so incredibly bad that it is impossible to progress in the game and even start to get into the story.
Overall Thoughts
Road to Guangdong is far from the visual novel with an added “zen” driving experience that it claims. This game feels like it was hastily thrown together as fast as possible with little care regarding gaming mechanics. The controls do not respond as they should and even trying to look around is a frustrating, difficult experience that is not worth the time or money, in my opinion. When considering Road to Guangdong‘s price point and all of its flaws, I would definitely steer away from this game.
Final Verdict: I Don’t Like it.
