For this review of the indie offroad driving game Over the Hill, I was considering using a phrase along the lines of "the chill-out game of the year" in the headline, but this rang a niggling bell in my head. I looked it up, and sure enough, I'd used this exact framing three years ago for my preview of Don't Nod's excellent rock-climbing game Jusant. That's apt — Over the Hill inspires similar feelings in me, and I've compared the two games before.
Like Jusant, Over the Hill presents a clean, aspirational vision of an outdoorsy pastime, all smoothed and streamlined for maximum relaxing pleasure. Like Jusant, it's a meditative, peaceful game of exploration that's focused on taking it easy, reading the environment carefully, and being in the moment. Like Jusant, it has a beautiful art style, foregoing detail in favor of chunky, tactile modeling washed in pastel colors and rich sunset hues.
In a way, Over the Hill is an even more minimal game. Jusant has a sparse, near-wordless narrative; Over the Hill doesn't even have that. Jusant is also a crafted, linear experience with a start and a definitive end.
Over the Hill is just a sequence of large maps you can explore at will, dotted with things to discover and do. It's playable in four-player co-op, which I didn't get to try but imagine is a fun hangout experience. Played alone, though, it's a gloriously quiet and soothing experience.
Over the Hill is made by Funselektor, a Vancouver-based indie specializing in cool, retro motorsport games. You might know the studio from Art of Rally, a rally game with a top-down view. Art of Rally is extremely stylish but lacks the handling bite necessary to make an old-school arcade racer like this work; I prefer this year's grungier, sharper Super Woden: Rally Edge.
Funselektor risks coming off like a hipster poseur in an enthusiast world, and that might be the conclusion you'd jump to if you compared Over the Hill with hardcore offroading sims like Saber Interactive's MudRunner and SnowRunner. But Over the Hill comes from a different place, and the studio's approach works much better here than it did with Art of Rally. Founder Dune Casu is a motorsport enthusiast and self-described "adventure seeker" who sometimes works out of a camper van, developing games as he roams around the U.S., Canada, and Mexico.
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