Yesterday afternoon, after a brief daydream near Aberdeen, South Dakota led to a maddening* speeding ticket, I parked Sally in the first gas station I came across, and began scanning Steam for a potential disappointment dissipater. Over the Hill, the new off-roading game from Funselektor, the Art of Rally people, looked like just the thing.
* I was only a couple of clean runs away from securing American Truck Simulator’s Nowhere to Rush achievement.
Two hours later, I was thoroughly de-irked, but Over the Hill hadn’t done quite enough to keep me from moving on to another, more familiar and dependable 4WD diversion.
The environments in OTH are ravishing, especially when the sun is close to the horizon or just below it.
Based on real vehicles from the 60s, 70s, and 80s, the rides are cute as heck. The music and sounds are perfect too. What eventually drove me into the welcoming arms of Pure Rock Crawling was the thinly veiled aimlessness and the slightly dull vehicle physics.
If driving down a forest track or across a sea of dunes in OTH kept brain and digits busy, and could be viewed over a bouncing bonnet, I suspect I’d have no issue with game’s laid-back explore-to-unlock modus vivendi. Because the only thoughts in my head for much of my admittedly brief playtest were ‘Avoid that tree/boulder’ and ‘Beautiful view!’ it wasn’t long before I started hankering for something grittier and more intense.
As Pure Rock Crawling hasn’t received an update since January 2025, and developer Maciej Kuzianik seems to have vanished, it looks like his £13 creation won’t be gaining any more venues, vehicles, or features.
Thankfully, that’s not a huge problem as each of the five maps boasts ten cone-marked trails and limitless opportunities for off-piste clambering, and the six default rides can be customised in numerous ways.
While the maps are tiny compared to OTH’s spacious wildernesses, what they lack in size they make up for in detail. Thanks largely to soft-body tyre physics, subtle collision detection, and seriously knobbly terrain, driving five metres in PRC can be more interesting than driving five hundred in Funselektor’s offering.
Yes, better audio and more camera flexibility wouldn’t go amiss. Engines sound awfully tinny and creaks, thumps, and groans are few and unconvincing. When driving in first-person it would be lovely to be able to look backwards, and switch to a similar passenger view for nearside wheel and clearance inspection.
One addition guaranteed to prompt another flurry of sales would be mod support. As much as I love Pure Rock Crawling’s ‘Buggy’ and ‘Short Rock’, I’d garage them in seconds if a Willys Jeep was available.