Just Add Oil Game's Road to Guangdong is a fascinating little road trip simulator experiment. It's bold in a lot of ways that other simulator games are not and its circa-'90s China setting gives it a unique aesthetic. These strengths are reinforced by wonderful, quirky characters who enrich an already zany, interesting world. Unfortunately, Road to Guangdong's game mechanics are something of a mixed bag and its narrative is often way too rushed to be as emotionally impactful as it could be. Overall, Road to Guangdong is still better than the sum of its parts simply because of how bold it can often be, even if it's not anything approaching a masterpiece.
Road to Guangdong tells the story of Sunny going on a road trip with her grandmother to seek the approval of relatives so she can take over the family restaurant. Along the way, Sunny will encounter and solve other side stories within her family, ranging from adoption-related problems to playing matchmaker. What tethers these mini stories together is the theme of family, and what it means to be ive of them. It's a powerful concept for a video game to explore, especially when the game makes it so centralized to its game mechanics.
During these encounters, players will need to question and gather information about said family in order to solve their issues or move on to the next phase of the game. These aren't complicated mechanics in the least bit. In fact, this is where Road to Guangdong is at its most breezy. It's the interactions between Sunny and her family that gives the game any sort of narrative weight and the fact that it's set up almost like a detective simulator just adds to that strength. These are very rich characters with unique personalities.
Road to Guangdong's biggest challenge is in actually getting from one place to the next. The only means of transportation that Sunny and her grandmother have available to them is a car affectionately named Sandy. It's a rusted and ancient car that constantly needs maintenance work and runs out of gas faster than a Hummer in the city. This is where the game kind of loses steam, as looking at its beautiful landscape can only entrance for so long. It's also a balancing act trying to maintain the vehicle's needs without running out of money and sometimes it feels like the game is deliberately designed for players to fail.
While the interactions between characters feels natural and fluid, the narrative is bizarrely fast-paced. Stories conclude just as the drama and emotion is starting to ramp up and there's never enough time to really consider or mull over what just happened. It's a dramatic experience with the pace of a blockbuster action movie, which is an odd pairing that never really coalesces. There's a great story buried in Road to Guangdong about family and grief and it's just too bad that players aren't given enough time to really experience it.
As a whole, Road to Guangdong is an interesting experiment in the very niche road trip simulator category that's ultimately worth a look because of its bold form of storytelling and interesting, captivating characters. The fact that its flaws are so persistently visible throughout most of it means that it won't be a game for everyone, but for someone looking for a unique, imperfect experience, this might be just the game they're looking for. Still, in another world where different developmental choices were made, Road to Guangdong could have been the indie masterpiece it's so often striving to be.
Road to Guangdong releases August 28 on Xbox One and Nintendo Switch. It will be released on September 4th on PC. Screen Rant was provided an Xbox One copy for the purposes of this review.
