It's fun to be pleasantly surprised. I don't really know why I thought beforehand that The Road Ahead, which is set in the A Quiet Place universe, would be bad, but it felt terribly overlooked beforehand and yes, not exactly something that screamed for attention. But maybe it should have. After sneaking through all sorts of environments in this adventure, I end up pleasantly surprised at the experience I had. It's not great, not by a long shot, and there are a lot of things here that still make me grumble, but as a whole, this is a reasonably entertaining game.
Outdoors, the game is often really pretty and I would have preferred more environments like this.
If you know the premise of A Quiet Place, it's about blind aliens (so-called Death Angels) arriving on Earth and slaughtering most people. Our protagonist Alex soon finds herself on a journey that takes her to different places and puts her survival skills to the test. Survival becomes the big issue in many ways, as apart from the fact that you are constantly prey to these monsters that react to every sound, it's also important to keep the protagonist's asthma in check. This point, along with making as little noise as possible, is the biggest issue as otherwise Alex will have an asthma attack. Fortunately, there are pills and inhalers scattered around, with the tablets always consumed straight away, while you can carry a few inhalers with you to use when needed.
As well as asthma getting worse over time, it's also affected by Alex carrying heavy things or the stress that comes when a monster is around. For the most part, these creatures are not visible, but you are definitely not safe even though they are not in your eyeline. In terms of gameplay, it's sort of divided into two types of presence; one where the monster lurks in the periphery but isn't visible on the screen, and one where it roams around and has to be avoided when you get to a more confined space. It's all about staying quiet, very quiet. To help you, you have a small meter that shows how loud the noise from the environment is and the noise you make yourself. If the meter on the latter exceeds the ambient noise for too long or you make a noise that is too loud, like bumping into something, you're usually screwed. There is no way to fight back. No firearms or escape routes, if the monster hears you, you die. For those who want to make the game a bit gimmicky, it's actually also possible to run the game with a microphone picking up your sound. I tried this for a moment and while it is an absolutely, fun and unique idea, it's nothing I wanted to have on all the time.
Strategically placed tombstones that must be avoided or a monster will come and you will die.
The constant sneaking makes it clearer that this game requires a lot of patience. It would probably be possible to rush through the game in an hour or so, but since you are required to sneak pretty much the whole time, your progress is very slow. I personally think that the parts when the monster is visible worked better than when the game only implies that it's there with sound, mostly because the game's death animations feel very disconnected when you are killed otherwise.
In smaller areas, it's a matter of getting round the monster and finding your way onwards.
The game's sense of horror works well overall. It's a bit inconsistent in terms of the sound as a few times I died even though I didn't really understand why. The meter system is unreliable, and there is some frustrating trial and error moments here that didn't quite work, but fortunately they didn't happen very often. Also, the game's limits on survival are a little too tight as not only is there a lot of asthma to keep in check, but also the world's worst quality of batteries, which in your flashlight run out way too fast. However, there is a bigger problem and that is that you have to switch between the flashlight and the meter that shows the sound. This means that you kind of have to either keep track of your sound level or occasionally see where to go.
I really appreciate games that keep the user interface clean, preferably completely blank. But in this case, it could have been solved that the meter instead appeared on a bracelet or just neatly and stylishly at the bottom of the screen. Switching between these two items is done at the touch of a button so it's not a cumbersome process but when you have to rely on them so much it still becomes frustrating.
A handy meter shows how loud the surrounding noise is and it is important to stay quieter than that.
The game's soundscape is, I must say, one of the game's strongest elements. Sure, we are not offered any directly memorable music, but the stripped-down soundscape fits very well. It's in the sound effects and stressful little sounds that an effective atmosphere is created and frames it all very well. As for the visuals, I think the game looks good when you are outdoors and even a lot of details impress. However, we get to travel a little too much through typically boring factory-like premises, which leads me to what I think A Road Ahead stumbles most regarding the game as a whole.
Despite its title, I think this feeling of going on a journey disappears too much. The reason is simply that the game takes place far too much in tight spaces where you constantly travel from room-to-room, from one corridor to another and climbing through countless ventilation shafts. It's when the game occasionally offers a road lined with vehicles, a park with a view of water, or a forest where the road feels a little more open that it becomes the most fun. The game's chapters are essentially small paths that lead me to the next building that takes up most of it, and while it's obviously easier in a development sense to have a monster to avoid in a warehouse than in a larger area, you still use the concept that monsters are usually not visible so it would have worked anyway. I simply would have liked more of a road trip out of this journey and for houses and other buildings to appear along the way instead of making up the majority of the game. Natural environments are handled very well and even if the visuals feel a bit dated, many scenes, especially outdoors, are very pretty. So, more roads to travel on and less rooms to go through, simply put.
The torch has poor quality batteries.
Apart from this, there is one big thing that marred the experience. I don't know how many times I pressed X in this game. To jump over something, up on something, down from something... This really needed to be rethought, made to flow better and make the movement more seamless. The fact that I need to press X to open a door or pick up an object is of course perfectly fine. But when you have to interact so much with the environment in terms of moving forward, this button press followed by a short animation becomes incredibly tiring when it happens as constantly as it does.
Although the journey felt a little too tiring towards the end and the game does not really engage with new game elements and fairly simple game mechanics, I still have to conclude by saying that I had quite a lot of fun all the way throughout. It would have taken quite a bit of polish to make this a masterpiece, but I still have to say that despite the modest score, it's a bit of a surprise of the year for me. Sure, in retrospect, it's one of those gaming experiences that I will hardly think back on, but I still had a surprisingly fun time during this journey.