9 Days in a Van with your 3 Best Friends

9 Days in a Van with your 3 Best Friends

Like at least 2 other people on the forums, I decided to play this game next because it was the longer of the last 2 unreviewed games.

This game has great design and UI and an authentic-feeling storyline, mixed in with some tedious but quickly-played grinding. You play as Dante, a fill-in as drummer for a band in 1991 driving cross country and living off the money they make during the 9 days of Spring Break. The grinding part is that you have to model driving cross country, choosing one exit at a time whether to keep driving or to pull over and get gas, and how much gas, and snacks.

The other reviews mentioned the game ending abruptly when the band broke up after money management didn't work out. I figured I'd try to end the game as early as possible by just playing poorly. I never talked to the band, just read books (loved the quotes) and listened to tapes, and kept going. At every point I drove as long as I could without spending money, driving on fumes and barely eating (the lentils were good).

I ended up making to Seattle, our goal, and played the last day, and then the game ended with me in the future reminiscing. The cut to the future part was abrupt since we had had dream sequences quite a bit, and I thought this was another one (maybe a giant banner called 'epilogue' would have helped). But I felt satisfied with my plot arc. I looked at the endings. I got the most boring one where I didn't keep in contact with anyone from the band (also, this game isn't twine, I think it's custom).

This brought back a lot of memories. I was in a jazz band in high school (an official school one) but was sheltered and never went out with friends. After a performance the drummer asked if I wanted to 'drag state' with him and his friends late at night (Utah's most populated areas are basically aligned vertically along I-15 and State street, and State was the big, populated road in SLC, which was the 'big city' to my suburb-raised eyes. 'Dragging state' meant slowly driving up and down the road.') The drummer was a blond kid with emotional control issues but seemed really cool. The game he and his friends played was taking off your shirt and hanging out the car window as long as you could in the frigid Utah winter air, then once you chickened out and pulled back in you got slapped as hard as you could by everyone. It was a glimpse into a world that I had never known. The lights did look beautiful and the air smelled so good late at night in the Utah winter.

The game also reminded of that exact same drive they describe (well, almost). I, too, have driven along I-80 from the Bos-Wash area (for me, Philly), through the rural and church-focused plains and hills of pennsylvania, across Indiana (always the worst part of the trip due to the change in what can be sold across state borders), across the Mississippi (which was much larger than I expected, opposite of the MC in the game), some other route I don't remember (I've been through Wyoming, maybe there?) and eventually to the west coast and Washington (I always remember a very specific place on the way to Washington or in Eastern Washington where the road is in a flatter area past some hills/mountains and there's a field of sunflowers, and for some reason the road takes a sharp 90 degree turn left in the middle of nowhere. I always wondered why).

That's why I didn't mind the grinding as much. It's real. The first day or two you might have music planned or fun things but near the end it's just a hypnotic state where hours fly by and all you care about is the next exit.

Fun game, good memories. That kind of music wasn't my scene (I was terrified of hearing damage and avoided loud music and concerts at all costs), but the nostalgia feels right.