Route88 2.0.11

Dawn. You put on your leather jacket and walk out on the street. You enter your Camaro, turn on the engine and start looking through the stack of cassettes. You grab one at random and plug it in the onboard cassette player. You press Play, go into Drive and rush to the highway.

The last couple of years the Internets has seen a great revival of the eighties A E S T H E T I C and music. This phenomenon was greatly accentuated by the metapolitical wave that followed Donald Trump's electoral campaign. Bright neon lights, high contrasts, low-poly landscapes, cyberpunk, and kick-ass tunes are, now, here to stay, and have begun dripping into all sorts of media, including the PlayStore.

You know all of those sleek depictions of Lamborghinis going into the sunset? Route88 puts you in the driver's seat. The game imitates Outrun in some sense, but it plays like a pre-GameBoy era handheld console. You're trying to last as long as possible without colliding with the traffic. You're not driving a Lambo, but it's just as exciting.

There are no powerups, no in-app purchases, and no stress. Even ads are only displayed if you feel like supporting the creator. There's a "watch ad" button in the menu that you can ignore without any impediment. Such a nice guy, or guys, or gals, anyway they're all goys. ;) As far as visuals go, you can judge for yourself.

The only issue I take with Route88 is its lackluster optimization. I myself have noticed that the timer element spills out of the screen, and my device experiences something akin to a memory dump whenever I exit the app, but it's otherwise, 100% playable. However, some users only get a blank screen when trying to run it. Bummer. Maybe they should outrun it then, eh?

Final Thoughts

Route88 is an unpretentious infinite racer, that may or may not run smoothly on your smartphone. It feels so much like a passion project more than anything else. If you've nothing to do while you listen to your latest fav retro album, Route88 works as a great companion.The game loses two stars for technical issues, but wins one back for the zeitgeist.