We are in an age where super serious sims are often realistic to the detriment of enjoyment. Casual racers shove delicious rewards down your throat without leaving you the time or space to taste them. And friendslop is the order of the day for general gaming, providing magical moments of shared joy and laughter, often without the polish or long-term journey.
You can, of course, do things differently. And here, an attempt has been made to bring things back to basics. A focus on shared journeys, without slop. Reward, but with room to breathe and time to savour it. And all the colour you crave, but without the excess noise.
Over the Hill isn’t your run-of the-mill game – it’s a mood.
It’s tough to pigeonhole, but the best way to describe it is a cosy, open-world exploration and adventure off-road driving game.
Developed by Canadian indie studio Funkselektor, famous for its arcade gem Art of Rally, this latest project has a similarly playful and minimalist aesthetic.
As a game, it’s slow-paced, with an appropriately simple core structure. You control an off-road vehicle, roaming with nothing more than a map, a compass and a winch. This map provides the foundation for the gameplay, revealing its secrets as you travel and uncover landmarks, challenges and collectables. Finding these and conquering the tasks in question represents your overall progress.
Traversing is made easier thanks to cabins, which act as quick-travel spawn points. Once you find a cabin, you can access it permanently, giving you an effective chain of basecamps to begin each adventure. Vehicle upgrades can be earned along the way, improving your exploration potential.
Every player will start in the same spot, but choosing to travel east or west at the first fork in the so-called ‘road’ (often a sorry excuse for a footpath), could dramatically alter the look of your entire progression path.
There is a wider purpose at play here too, because as you venture further, you will eventually stumble across a portal, transporting you elsewhere.
Location, location
Yes, there are a handful of areas to explore and maps to unveil, set across two distinct locations. And we must analyse these extensively, as they are paramount to the game’s appeal.
The first of which, The Valhallas mountain range in Canada, is awfully familiar to Funselektor’s founder and creative game director, Dune Casu.
Across three areas, you will discover rivers, waterfalls, gorges, woodlands, marshlands, lakes and snow-capped mountains. It feels like nature putting its best foot forward, and you can see each part from every conceivable angle.
Luscious landscapes flaunt their features in the sunlight, like a peacock spreading its wings. Never have we reached for a photo mode more often than this.
But then the storm comes or night falls, and that bold warmth and vibrance is replaced by a sense of isolation and vulnerability. It can feel cold, lonely and intimidating, but the boldness always remains. And the satisfaction of reaching that viewpoint in one piece, making camp for the night and looking down across the foothills and valley floor as the sun rises, is sweeter for it.
The second location, the Algerian desert, couldn’t be much more of a contrast. Dry and sandy, with expansive horizons, the only commonality is the abundance of rocks.
There’s a bit less to work with here, and it can feel a little subdued and predictable in comparison to the Valhallas. But there are still plenty of surprises and special moments waiting for you.
Whether it be cresting a blind summit, thinking you are continuing your near-ground level expedition, only to discover rocky ruins in an epic valley, hundreds of feet below. Or riding sand dunes like waves, before coming across a hidden Oasis with greenery and beautiful blue water.
Wooden walkways barely wide enough for your steed, guide you from one rock platform to another, with treacherous verticality built into the design of the map, adding layers, scale and challenge. Something might appear to be metres away, but first, you have to work out how on earth you are going to reach it.
Occasionally, things do feel outlandish, with sculpted rock hands and the odd floating island breaking the otherwise natural experience. Nothing wrong with a bit of injected fun, but some specific additions feel superfluous and out of place.
The game would certainly benefit from more locations, too. Each map represents a new story, and this really is the crux of the game. More locations equal more variety, and fresh excitement.
However, the developers have managed to extract every ounce from what’s there, without compromising on polish. And each area presents a different set of challenges to tackle, in order to progress.
Collecting pebbles
Scenic points and ‘points of interest’ in the form of crates both act as reachable landmarks. One reveals spectacular views and hands you pebbles, while the other unlocks a free, usually playful, cosmetic item… and hands you pebbles.
Yes, pebbles are the form of currency you must collect in over the hill, to fund your vehicle upgrades. Mechanical improvements to your engine, suspension, tyres and more, involve simple linear upgrade paths, making travelling more efficient, increasing your off-road capabilities and allowing you to reach the trickiest spots without getting stuck.
Completing tasks earn you pebbles, so you will often find yourself attempting easier ones first with your stock machine, in order to build up your resource and improve your fleet before tackling tougher tests.
Once you have a fully upgraded vehicle in your ranks, reverting back to a standard one can feel frustrating. Progress suddenly feels lethargic, and with fewer items (such as portable winches and jacks) in your inventory to weasel your way out of tricky spots, it becomes all too easy to give up and resort back to the safety of your souped-up prize stallion.
The challenge
That being said, you can have all the gear, but still no idea. The game encourages active problem-solving and thinking on your feet when things turn ugly. Of course, luck comes into play too, whether you land on your wheels or your roof after a fall, or your winch cable snags a rogue branch at the wrong angle.
Weather plays a crucial role, too. One challenge might seem simple in the sunshine, with blue skies and all of that traction making you look like a hero in photo mode. Try the same thing in a blizzard with snow up to your engine bay, or a sandstorm where you can’t see five pixels in front of your face. Suddenly, the grip levels change, and you may find yourself in all kinds of strife.
That’s when you become a real hero, but your windswept photo at the peak will leave you with no view to show for it.
On a more jolly note, the terrain deformation is impressively detailed, both visually and in terms of how it affects the physics. You plough through sand and snow, but can easily retrace your steps. Water cleans your vehicle if you cross a river, and you can treat grip levels in a realistic fashion.
Into the unknown
Some tasks are really easy, like spotting crates beside a road, and many of the item recovery missions, which involve winching up to an abandoned vehicle, and towing it back to camp nearby.
Less gentle, however, are the challenge trails. These are checkpoint-based, often taking you up a narrow gorge, along a particularly daunting mountain pass, or a highly technical perimeter route requiring motorcycle-trial levels of precision. Some are short, while others can take half an hour. Some are fun, but a few can be relatively mundane. You never quite know until you reach that final checkpoint.
This may cause frustration for some, without the information to make an informed decision about whether now is the appropriate time to attempt it.
It feels as though the harder challenges reap greater rewards too, with new vehicles unlocked after what often feels like a stern test, and more basic cosmetics for the easier bits.
Over the hill’s driving experience is relatively benign. The steering lacks dynamism. During direction changes or high-stakes moments when wheel placement is critical, the analogue sticks require a deft touch to avoid disaster. But the vehicles don’t feel stiff: you can see and feel the suspension working predictably, and different vehicle types offer subtly different characteristics and manoeuvrability.
Gameplay is locked to a single camera angle, with no bumper or cockpit cam, but this doesn’t detract from the experience, as adjusting angles and zoom levels on the fly allows you to tailor your view to suit most scenarios.
It runs smoothly, too. Frame rates were largely stable at 60fps across multiple PC’s with differing specs, using the ultra graphics preset.
There was the occasional exception when certain dramatic weather events took hold and temporarily slowed things down, but never for more than a handful of seconds. The game feels perfectly suited to handheld devices, too. On a Steam Deck, we achieved a stable 30fps using the recommended medium graphics preset – the only exception was when viewing larger vistas. The controls were immediately intuitive, too.
Slow and steady
Games like this rely on appropriate pacing, and here you never feel too far away from the next task, with the evolving map resulting in constant tangible progress. The size of each area feels about right as well. Big in scope, and translating a feeling of vastness, without being overly intimidating.
Rarely do you feel like you’re on a hiding to nothing (maybe just when repeating failed challenges), and the pace of discovery is complemented by the slow buildup of pebbles. Taking a vehicle from a toothless clunker to a capable rock climber isn’t the work of a moment.
There are other ways you can fast-track the pebble collecting without chasing collectables. One is by chasing meteorites. These land sporadically across the map, and if you find one in the ground (assisted by a shimmering orange glow), you can extract it with your winch to earn pebbles without affecting overall game progression.
Another, is by taking photos of various wildlife. Yes, Over the Hill is also a David Attenborough simulator, and snapping shots of a new animal, be it a deer, goat, camel, fox, eagle, bear or even a sasquatch adds to the overall personality of the game, as well as pebbbles to your pocket. Just don’t scare them off with headlights and a novelty horn.
Rushing to take an image of your future dream pet exposes a small gripe: the clunky radial menu. Even after days of playing, operating it feels unnatural, which can lead to missed animal photography opportunities and the odd winch accident.
Still, that can become entertaining when playing in co-op, which is online only and for four players in total.
Progress is interchangeable with up to five save slots from launch, and each player can see their own progress on their own maps. You can travel together and work as a team to complete your respective objectives, whether they match or not.
Aside from a shared journey, multiplayer provides more inventory items and further options when the going gets tough. You can use a second vehicle as a battering ram to give someone a shove up a tricky incline. Then they can anchor themselves at the top and winch their friends up, for instance.
Teamwork makes the dream work, but it also means that more cars can make a misstep, fall down a cliff or fail to cross a tricky gap. When one car falls down, they might take the other with them.
Either way, it results in group euphoria, frustration, and often laughter. Over the Hill is best played in this way, despite still being perfectly well-suited to single-player exploration.
Above all else, the game’s ambience is what makes it memorable. The sky sets the tone with its exuberance and vivacity, working with the dynamic weather to set a mood. The original soundtrack truly puts you in the wilderness, as you traverse with trepidation yet eager to discover more.
The game’s charm transcends expectations, evoking an emotional response from this cosy, low-stakes free-roam adventure that rivals some story-based RPG, depending on your mood.
It’s just you, your friends and your vehicles, in the middle of virtual nowhere, enjoying some escapism. It somehow captures a little bit of that feeling you might get from a real-world expedition, but without the tent construction, mosquito bites and sand in your face. It’s just a game, but a rather special one at that.
Score: 9/10
“Thoughtful design and world, magically executed.”
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