I've been dealing with a lot of grief in my personal life lately and I recently picked this game up after seeing a recommendation by SkillUp on one of his episodes.

After having played it, not only is its game play fantastic and its soundtrack AMAZING (same composer who did Helldivers 2) but it has also legitimately helped me grieve in a way I can't fully explain.

The easiest way I've seen it explained is "STAL-CAR" (STALKER + Car) but it's essentially a 'Last road-trip at the end of the world' rogue-lite with your station wagon as your only companion and the narrative, mostly ignore-able if you don't really care as it's a lot of logs and audio, has characters dealing with their grief, pains, spite, and regrets as reality starts to come un-done all around you.

For me personally, it hit a resounding emotional chord as my Grandfather who recently passed and I would often ride along together in his van and "just cruise" (as we called it) allowing our minds to sort our crazy lives out and this invoked that difficult to describe feeling during the downtime drives beautifully sprinkled in-between frantic get-a-ways and eerie abnormalities.

Also, practically all in-game settings/events are customizable in the settings; you can essentially make it what-ever type of game you want. As I played this initially on the Steam Deck (performance varied greatly) it allowed me to turn off the more challenging aspects of the game while I was learning and to accommodate my need to spontaneously put it down to do other duties.

Does the game have some bugs?
Yes; however, I haven't encountered anything game-breaking yet (mostly UI gaffs with the Dualsense) in almost 35 hours of playtime. I realize I have purchased this game around patch 1.4.5 so some polish has already been added but it's made me hopeful that more polish is on the way with greater hopes for mod support and Steam Deck verification in the future.

In the end, I HIGHLY recommend it.
It's only 30$ full price but I enjoyed it so much that I bought an extra copy for my brother and purchased the soundtrack (for myself ) so that I could support the developers.

I want more games like this, I want these developers to succeed, and I personally want to thank Ironwood Studios for helping me grieve through one of life's most difficult events; losing a loved-one.