Ithaca, a narrative role-playing game (RPG), is due late 2027. A short demo was available during Summer Game Fest to take the game for a short test drive. The game featured impressive visuals, and although the gameplay experience was difficult to grasp for the short timeframe, it is worth monitoring as the game develops.

Develop Your Dialogue

The story revolves around Penelope, an environmental rights lawyer who will do whatever it takes to save the planet, including carrying a hostage in your trunk as you drive to Ithaca. It’s a mature game with a deep storyline in which you’ll interact with over thirty NPCs, each possessing a unique personality that you can engage with through various forms of communication.

The game carries RPG elements where you can shape Penelope’s stats, which can adjust her personality. Doing so will determine how the story unfolds. The game is set to have multiple endings based on how you communicate with your friends, hostages, and more. It’s geared towards being a narrative game rather than an action one. Based on what was played, players can adjust the car’s dashboard from changing music to calling someone on your contact list and more. In the demo we couldn’t drive the car, but the development team mentioned the game will have a manual driving mode, a cleaner user interface, in-car GPS/map, additional light puzzle games, and more.

The essence of the driving experience and story development was intriguing; however, it was challenging to grasp the situation fully when starting the demo, as you were simultaneously interacting with the car’s infotainment system to see what would happen while understanding the dialogue that was occurring. Regardless, I’m already intrigued enough to test the demo again after more development time has passed.

Taking It All In

The environment designs when looking out of the car as you drive are clean, simple animations but captivating. Watching a farm of windmills in the distance or the simple mountain landscape as cars pass by you feels soothing. Driving at night captures the essence of the low-light environment, with the dashboard providing the only source of color in the darkness. Cutscenes are clean and simple and carry a comic book-style animation.

Approach the Next Exit

Overall Ithaca is on the path to being an intriguing game with blended RPG elements and strong narrative storylines that’ll steer players to different endings. With artistic visuals looking fantastic and more gameplay elements to be added, it’ll be worth taking a second trip.

Ithaca is set to launch for the Nintendo Switch 2, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC (Steam). A confirmed release date not revealed and set to launch in Q4 2027. Fans can visit the game’s official website for more information and wishlist the game on Steam. We appreciate Day of the Devs team for giving us the opportunity to take this indie game for a ride at the Summer Game Fest.