over the hill review: an offroading adventure with little purpose

Funselecktor Labs Inc. is known for its minimalist yet vibrant takes on various forms of motorsport, starting with Absolute Drift in 2015, followed by Art of Rally in 2020 and Golden Lap in 2024. Now, the independent studio is tackling offroading, but rather than competing against the clock or other drivers, over the hill is about exploring an open world on your lonesome (or with a friend or three) at your own pace.

Taking inspiration from the recent wave of cozy games, over the hill doesn’t have concrete aims or objectives as such. Rather, you simply pootle around the various maps to discover various points of interest and earn Pebbles, the game’s currency, to upgrade your vehicle to better navigate the environment.

Off the beaten path

over the hill sticks to the same cardboard-cutout aesthetic of the developer’s past efforts. Textures are flat and basic, but they’re elevated by the pastel colors and lush lighting effects, with environments drenched in pinks, oranges, and greens that invite players to explore them.

There are two main regions to choose from at the start of a game: Canada and Algeria. Each has its own sub-areas (three for Canada and two for Algeria), featuring all kinds of terrain and climates; you’ll see rain, snow, and sandstorms, which naturally affect your driving and navigation abilities, adding an extra element of challenge.

The music complements the visuals perfectly. The in-game radio gives you four ‘albums’ to choose from, each representing a certain flavor of ambient, from synth-heavy pieces to folksy guitar numbers, all with gentle melodies to lull you as you play. I was impressed with the score’s production value, given that it merely serves to subtly set the mood as you play.

This is a game low on story and characters, but high in vibes — specifically of the zen variety. Aside from the Buddha statue that acts as your tutorial guide, the only other character is Crazy Günther, the hippie mechanic you visit to customize your vehicle. His textual dialogue (there’s no VO) adds a small amount of flavor to an otherwise purely functional NPC, and it chimes well with the gentle tone of the game.

Once you learn the basics in the brief tutorial, you’re left to explore the world. Campsites are the chief points to discover, as they act as the game's main fast travel hubs. You can also use them to fast-forward time, useful if you want to wait for a different time of day or skip certain weather events.

Other points of interest in the maps include crates that unlock cosmetic features for your vehicle, as well as scenic points from which to take photographs. You can also find Trial Challenges to complete, which take you along treacherous routes of varying lengths to test your off-roading skills, and find wildlife to snap. These discoveries and activities earn you Pebbles.

Pedal to the metal?

If you’re looking for a fast and furious off-roading experience, over the hill isn’t it. Instead, it takes a considered, sedate approach to the sport, one that rarely rewards harebrained driving and impatience. Speeds are slow at the best of times, with second gear being the highest. True to real life, vehicles have both low and high range gears, with the former being used to give you better control and traction on slippery surfaces and steep slopes. Such surfaces are indicated organically via the game’s visual style, without making it too obvious by overtly highlighting them.

Anyone who’s played MudRunner or SnowRunner will be in familiar territory with over the hill. As long as you’re in the right gear range, you don’t have to worry too much about being sensitive with the throttle; you’ll either make it up a slope or you won’t, regardless of how you modulate the throttle. Steering is fairly laborious as well, with the wheels being slow to turn and recenter on most vehicles, which only adds to the challenge of navigating around obstacles. I’ve never been offroading in real life, but this is how I’d imagine 4x4s to handle.

When the going gets too tough, you can use various bits of equipment to get you out of tight spots. First and foremost of these is the winch. A single button press will fire it at the tree you’re looking at (as long as it’s in range), and holding that same button will reel you towards it. You can also slacken the winch with another button, useful when you want to descend rather than ascend. If you want more control, you can use the winch in manual mode, which lets you choose which side of your vehicle to winch from and which tree to anchor to within a certain radius.

The winch can be used as many times as you like and is always in your inventory. Other tools, though, have to be selected before you enter a map; if you want to alter your loadout while playing, you’ll need to visit the mechanic. They’re also single-use items, although you select multiple instances of them, and they replenish whenever you visit a campsite. Among them are a portable anchor, which you can winch onto when there are no trees around, and two wooden planks to lay across small gaps or on the ground to give you more traction. These are a little fiddlier to use, as it can be a chore to line them up with your wheels, and misaligning them even slightly can easily result in your vehicle slipping off them. Still, they’re very useful and rewarding when you find yourself stuck. Other tools include a portable camp, a repair kit, and a car jack for righting your vehicle if you roll it over, which is easily done.

There’s a respectable number of customization and upgrade options for your vehicles. There are a variety of vehicle bodies to choose from, ranging from classic 4x4s and wagons to more utilitarian and industrial models — and yes, there’s even a campervan. The differences between them are more than cosmetic, as they each have their own speed and handling characteristics, despite the game not actually listing these stats. The selection is resolutely vintage, with no model looking beyond the 90s at best. Most are inspired by iconic real-life vehicles, too, as suggested by their menu descriptions.

You can personalize your vehicle with a large number of trinkets, unlocked via the crates you find throughout the world. Sadly, however, the paint options are more limited. As for upgrades, you can improve attributes such as speed, grip, protection, and tool capacity — all of which you’ll need to do if you want to explore every area completely. Again, though, the upgrades are limited in their stages, and you’ll find yourself maxing out your vehicle’s potential quite quickly.

Riding shotgun

While over the hill offers a good time solo, it’s more fun with friends. Having companions by your side (you can have up to four players in a server) not only takes some of the burden out of exploration, but also introduces the possibility of mischief. This is because you can winch to each other’s vehicles, which is obviously a big help when one of you is stuck in the weeds, but also allows you to pull each other off cliffs and into rivers. However, in order not to put the winch-ee at too much of a disadvantage, they can de-winch themselves at any point.

You can also explore independently if you so wish, and fast travel for one doesn’t mean fast travel for all, which gives everyone greater flexibility to explore. The whole experience ran smoothly during my testing; I didn’t encounter any problems with connectivity or lag, save for one occasion when my friend’s framerate dropped considerably, but Funselektor said this is a known issue with the preview build I played, so it’s entirely possible it’ll be rectified before launch. For most of my time in both single- and multiplayer, the game ran very smoothly, even at Ultra settings. The only real bug I experienced concerned some input clashes when I remapped certain buttons, but this was easy to work around.

Perhaps my main gripe with over the hill is that there’s just not that much to do. And while the central act of driving over rough terrain is fun thanks to the skill and problem-solving nous it requires, the mechanics lack real depth to sustain the game for long periods in the face of little additional activity. There’s not quite enough feel and feedback from slipping and sliding on loose ground to make it as engaging as it could be, and the lack of any sort of drifting mechanic — guaranteed to amplify the fun of any driving game by a factor of ten — is a real shame, especially since Funselektor has great form in this area, if its previous games are anything to go by.

I can only hope that future updates will add more to the driving and DLC will arrive to give players more to do. But for now, over the hill remains a fun time to while away an hour or so, but not much more than that.

Should you play over the hill?

Play over the hill if…

Don't play it if…

Accessibility features

There are no accessibility features to speak of in over the hill. Subtitles for dialogue are on by default, since there’s no VO, and the closest the game comes to offering any comfort features is letting you disable motion blur.

How I reviewed over the hill

I played over the hill for about 10 hours, seeing most of the main areas and features the game had to offer. I was also given a save file by Funselektor with all areas, upgrades, and customizations unlocked.

I mainly played solo, but I also tested online multiplayer by playing with a friend. I played on a gaming PC with an AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D processor, an RTX 5070 GPU, and 32GB of RAM. I played mostly with a controller, but I also tested its mouse and keyboard controls.

I’m a fan of racing and driving games, and I’ve played similar off-roading games, such as SnowRunner. I also played a lot of Art of Rally, one of Funselektor’s other titles.

First reviewed October 2026