Developer: Mad About Pandas
Publisher: Versus Evil
Platforms: PC, PS4, Xbox One, Switch
Tested on: PC, PS4, Xbox One, Switch
Hitchhiker – Review
Hitchhiker is a mysterious game that puts you in the shoes of someone who lost his memory and hitchhikes from place to place to find out more about himself, his past and his mysterious girlfriend he forgot about as well. The journey will take you across several landscapes with some exquisite drivers that all have their own stories to tell. By talking to these drivers, who strangely seem to know you, you’ll find out more and more, while also experiencing other things along the way.
Story
In Hitchhiker, you play as a person who sits in several strangers’ cars, hitchhiking from place to place. You don’t know where you’re headed, so you’ll just let the drivers take you somewhere. As you ride with them, they talk with you over the most trivial things. For example, the farmer you meet first talks to you about raisins, then suddenly starts talking about his deceased wife while slowly changing the conversation towards you. The thing is, you don’t know anything and you’re desperately trying to find out everything about yourself and how you got to where you were picked up. The people you ride with seem to already know you from before, but you don’t remember them at all.
Hitchhiker involves a big mystery of your past which you slowly start to find out about as you progress in the game. The game is divided into five chapters with each one offering a different environment and someone else talking to you while driving the car. All of these people have their own subjects they want to talk about while you want to discover more about yourself and the girl who is with you on an old polaroid. Whenever you ask questions about the girl or other related things, the drivers advise you to not dig any further, but it wouldn’t be a mystery game if you didn’t want to find out everything. The game will naturally progress to the new chapter when the current one has been completed.
Graphics
As the game plays out in the cabins of different cars, there’s not a lot to see, but with each different driver, you’ll see different environments that look quite nice. The drivers next to you look nicely animated with a lot of detail, while the car and the items in there are less detailed. With the core of the game revolving around conversations and finding out the mystery of your past, the graphics are definitely less important; but the game sure looks okay.
Sound
In every car, the music you hear on the radio is different, and it kind of fits the scene you are in. When the game gets more mysterious, the music gets more mysterious as well. Between conversations, you’ll have scenic breaks where the driver turns on the radio so you can enjoy the environment and interact with the items in the cars. The voice acting has been done pretty well in Hitchhiker, as each voice fits the character you see.
Gameplay
Hitchhiker is a mysterious narrative-driven game that revolves around talking with the drivers that are giving you a lift to your next destination while you are finding out about your past as you have forgotten everything about yourself and your mysterious girlfriend you know nothing of. Of the latter, you also don’t know where she is or if she’s okay.
With this type of game where you talk more than anything else, the gameplay is narrowed down to simple point and click controls and selecting responses while in conversations. You can change the course of conversations with the choices you make, which can lead to finding out more, or less. In every car you hitchhike in, you’ll find several objects you can interact with. Some of these objects are meaningless props you can only look at while the story continues, while others won’t be seen until they are needed at some point.
The game also offers you some small things to do like solving riddles, or following a swarm of fireflies to picture objects in the environment to progress through the game. By doing these tasks, strange things can happen, which are all clues to finding out more about yourself and your past. Some items will only appear after you’ve progressed in the scene, with each one contributing where necessary.
Conclusion
Hitchhiker is a very peculiar narrative-driven game that is truly a mystery game. From the beginning of the game, barely anything makes sense, and as you progress, all the pieces will very slowly will come together to form the truth of your past. Each chapter has its own environment, and person you’ll talk with. These characters all have their own story that strangely fits in the course of the journey you have made before you lost your memory. Hitchhiker is an interesting mystery game that may drive you to the edge of your seat. If you’re into solving riddles and finding out more about a remarkable story while not needing to put a lot of effort in it, then this game is perfect for you. Those who want to have some more action in their gaming sessions are better off hitching another ride.
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