Fade Road

Fade Road is a free post-apocalyptic road trip game in the browser. Behind you a grey wall of TV static, the Fade, is erasing the world mile by mile, and the only way out is west along twelve stops to the Last Depot at the end of the road. You drive an old wood-panelled station wagon with four slots in the trunk and a spare tire in one of them. The Fade is faster than your car over a whole trip: you stay ahead on clear road, and it gains every time you stop, crawl or crash.

The car breaks in ways you feel at the wheel. Potholes, nail strips, wrecks, sand and mud wear the tires down and pop them, and a flat pulls the car to one side until you fit the spare. A hot engine loses most of its power and steams from the hood, so on the long white straights of the Salt Flats you ease off or pull over and let it cool. An empty tank stops you dead, a dead battery kills the headlights on night stretches, and worn brake pads stop biting.

When something breaks and the part is in your trunk, stop at the side of the road and press Fix. Fitting the spare takes nine seconds, a fuel can four, coolant five, and every second of it the Fade keeps coming. A toolbox in the trunk or a Mechanic riding with you makes every roadside fix faster, so the game is always the same question: fix it now, or nurse it to the next stop.

Every stop offers three cards and each one costs time. A gas station fills the tank (or, when the tank is nearly full, hands you a spare tire instead), a junkyard sells spare tires, fuel cans, coolant, batteries and brake pads, a mechanic fits four new tires or rebuilds the radiator, and a motel puts everything right if you can spare a long night. Hitchhikers ride along: the Navigator makes hazards glow on the road ahead, the Drifter pays tokens at every stop and the Kid with a dog pays out if you both reach the next region. Hit the road takes nothing and costs nothing.

Then you pick the next stop on the map. The road runs through four regions, each drawn in ink like a page from a survivor’s road journal: the dusty mesas and burning horizon of Sunset Strip, the bleached glare of the Salt Flats under a sick green sky, the rain, mud, fallen logs and creek fords of Pine Hollow, and the ash plains and side wind of the Last Depot. Dirt shortcuts cut about 30 per cent of the road but are rough on tires, some routes run into dusk and night, and on others the bridge is out and you ford the river slowly or drown the engine.

Every trip ends in tokens, whether the Fade caught you or you arrived. Your first trip starts straight on the road, and nothing moves, not the car and not the Fade, until you touch the controls; when it ends the game takes you to the garage, and from then on it opens there with your last car picked and one Hit the road button. Spend your tokens in the garage on upgrades that last: a packed trunk, a long-range tank, tougher tires, a bigger radiator and an early start further ahead of the Fade. The Pickup carries six items on rough-road tires, and reaching the Last Depot unlocks the RV, with eight slots and a workshop, and the Long Road, where the Fade is faster and every token is worth more.