The Long and Winding Road
Wheels of Aurelia describes itself as narrative road trip game, and half racing game, half interactive fiction. I think they’ve considerably oversold the racing element, as the game is really all about the conversations and how you interact with the outer characters you meet on your journey. The game is set in Italy in 1978, a time and place of massive social change and political instability. You play Lella, a young woman from Rome with a need to get away from the capital and her family. She picks up a travelling companion at a disco, Olga, and so the road trip starts. As the women chat, you’re presented with a choice of two lines of dialogue to steer the conversation in the way you want, or there's always the option to stay quiet of course. Along the road, you’ll pick up hitchhikers and meet other characters and your interactions with them and where you drive them will have an impact on the story.
On the first play through, I was shocked to be told I had completed the game after only 15 minutes of play. I thought “is that it?”, but then realised that the whole point of this game is that you replay it over and over and aim to get a different ending each time. With 16 different endings there are plenty of story arcs to work through but the trick is to remember what you did previously and change that slightly each time. One play through Wheels of Aurelia is far too short to really get to know the characters so it’s good that its structured to reveal more of the back story every time. I knew very little about the Italy of the late 70’s and the story is immersed in the real events of the day, be it the tensions between political groups, the terrorists of the Red Brigade and the numerous kidnappings, to the heavy influence on society of the Catholic Church. The developers certainly haven’t played safe in the subject matter and aren’t scared to include some sensitive topics. The conversations may all be text based and only give you two choices for every interaction, but are still good enough to build well rounded characters that keep you interested and wanting to play the game again to find out more about them.
The simple graphic style looks great and along with the funky music, gives you a great feeling of the 1970’s that again draws you into the story. The mechanics of the driving are very basic, your car just drives along automatically and its only when you hit the accelerator that you need to steer, trying not to bounce of the rest of the traffic or the barriers at the side of the road. Its nigh on impossible to drive fast with no bumps along the way so you just try to keep them to a minimum, and will probably find that you’ll have to sacrifice taking part in some of the dialog to concentrate on your driving.
The endings of each game are communicated with a couple of simple screens of the scenery and a few sentences of explanation, but can offer very different outcomes to the story each time you play. In one playthrough for me, Lella became a secret agent, in another an illegal street racer, and in a third she settled down for a life of conservative domesticity.
Don’t be under the illusion that Wheels of Aurelia is a driving or racing game, these things are almost incidental to the main premise of guiding the characters to their destination through the conversations and interactions. Although not a great game it’s pretty, interesting, and educational enough to stop it becoming mundane with its need for you play through it again and again despite its lack of pace. I guess the Italians could always find a sense of style even in the worst of times!
Developer: Santa Ragione
Publisher: MixedBag SRL
Genre: Narrative/Driving
Price: £7.99
Many Thanks to MixedBag Srl for the review copy.