With the United States infested by endless hordes of zombies, the only hope for survival is escaping to the cold and zombie-free climes of Canada. Welcome to Death Road to Canada, a very unusual game that sends players on a randomly-generated road trip to Canada. Death Road, which has just arrived on consoles after first launching on PC, supports 2-player local co-op. And that’s a good thing, because it’s also one of the hardest Roguelikes I’ve played.
One of Death Road’s best features is its character editor. Many games just let you make a custom character or two; here you can save dozens of characters. There could certainly be more body types and clothing styles, but it’s still fairly easy to create cute pixel-art versions of friends and family. And each character also gets one perk and one trait, bestowing them with proficiencies in melee combat, firearms, healing car repair, and more.
When you start the game, you’ll choose a pair of your custom characters (or be lame and go with random ones) and send them out on one of several game modes. Initially, three modes are available, including one in which you’ll primarily run into your custom characters on the road, and another filled with encounters with special characters (such as parodies of Elvis, Garfield, Jason, and more). Bumping into your grandparents or some silly character, and optionally recruiting them into your party of up to four members, can certainly be amusing.
The road trip portion of Death Road draws obvious inspiration from Oregon Trail. As your car (or other vehicle) automatically cruises along the road, the characters in the party will have silly little text-based conversations. A huge number of randomized events can occur, either benefiting or hindering the party, such as finding a safe place to camp or encountering dangerous bullies, bandits, and wild kitties. Many of these offer players interesting choices, with options and outcomes affected by the stats and abilities of the party members. Thus the driving finds a good balance between interactivity (choices) and non- interactivity (the driving itself).
Cars don’t just run themselves, though – the team must periodically stop to look for gas, food, medical supplies, and weapons. When making supply runs, players usually have a choice between two or more locations. Grocery stores are likely to hold food, apartments might offer a mix of supplies, etc. Running out of supplies can negatively impact morale (which has many effects), prevent party members from healing injuries, or even force the party to leave their vehicle behind. So you always need to be looting.
The action portion of Death Road is just as randomized as the driving portion. Depending on the event type, your primary character and his or her partner(s) must either seek out supplies and then escape to their vehicle or survive against a horde of zombies for a set amount of time before escaping. Combat is simple, with characters able to wield a huge variety of melee weapons (including cool rare swords, scythes, and more) and guns. Ammunition for guns is extremely limited, so saving them for dire emergencies often works best.
Characters can’t take very many hits before dying, and they will die often. Death Road’s inherent Roguelike difficulty (and lack of continues) is paired with increasingly tough action-stages/events. The closer you to get to Canada’s syrupy mountains, the denser the zombie hordes become. Sometimes they’re just too thick to escape. You’re bound to lose teammates along the way, though thankfully the people (and even animals) you encounter along the way can join up and help keep the team going. The game only ends when you reach Canada (a frustratingly unlikely goal) or the last member of your party dies.
Between runs, players can spend Zombo Points (awarded after certain events or found within event stages) on various permanent unlocks. These include leveling up existing perks for stat bonuses, unlocking new perks and traits, and more. It’s good that Death Road has a proper permanent unlocking system. But after a certain point, I had leveled the perks I wanted and the remaining unlocks didn’t seem all that helpful. I’ve also experienced a bug on Xbox One in which my unlocks don’t display properly until I’ve completed my first run of the session.
Drop-in, drop-out 2-player local co-op does, thankfully, make this ultra-tough journey slightly easier. A human partner can be more effective in combat, enabling the party to strategize rather than blindly following the lead player. You might find yourself surrounded by the undead, only for your partner to rush in with guns blazing and save the day. That’s important, because teammates can’t revive each other. If only one party member remains, the other player has to sit out until a new character joins the party.
Playing as a co-op partner is somewhat less satisfying than as the primary player, unfortunately. The second player can’t use their own profile or earn Achievements – they’ll simply tag along in the primary player’s game, with access to the primary player’s custom characters and random characters who join the party. It’s odd that the game is limited to two players when the party can consist of up to four characters, but supposedly 4-player support might be added in the future.
Switching characters is not intuitive whether you’re playing solo or in co-op. Solo, you have to pause and navigate slightly clunky menus to switch between party members. In co-op, the second player can switch between unused party members whenever the team enters a new area or building. You never have the option to just switch with the bumper buttons, etc., which is unintuitive and needlessly slows the game’s pace down at times.
The second player’s experience is also needlessly inferior to the primary player’s. Player 2 can’t go through doors – only the first player can. So the first player has to lead the way, and the second player has to follow. Player 2 can’t talk to NPCs encountered during event stages or shops, either. It can already be hard enough to talk a co-op buddy into playing when they can’t use their own profile, so these arbitrary restrictions on the second player’s actions don’t do the game any favors.
Death Road to Canada is a charming game that really had me hooked at first. The blend of Oregon Trail- style travel, action, humorous writing, and charming pixel art are very enticing. The music by Joey Grady is far less catchy and doesn’t fit the mood of the game (and you’ll also want to turn up the sound levels to even hear it, at least on Xbox). The element that hurts long-term appeal is the difficulty.
It’s not that I dislike hard games – Dark Souls III and Crypt of the Necrodancer are personal favorites. But here, the difficulty is truly unfair at times. You’ll have a happy, healthy party and plenty of supplies one moment, only to run into a random event that injures everyone or steals all your supplies the next. When I lose, I often feel like it’s because the game decided I should lose rather than because I made a mistake. Failing so often, the beginning of the game starts to become repetitive and hopelessness sets in. Still, the early hours of the game are fun enough to warrant a purchase – especially if you have a co-op partner to ride shotgun.