Over the Hill Just Invented the Cozy Driving Game and I'm in Love

The indie offroading game is gorgeous and has immaculate chill, but it's not without teeth

For this review of the indie offroad driving game Over the Hill, I was considering using a phrase along the lines of "the chill-out game of the year" in the headline, but this rang a niggling bell in my head. I looked it up, and sure enough, I'd used this exact framing three years ago for my preview of Don't Nod's excellent rock-climbing game Jusant. That's apt — Over the Hill inspires similar feelings in me, and I've compared the two games before.

Like Jusant, Over the Hill presents a clean, aspirational vision of an outdoorsy pastime, all smoothed and streamlined for maximum relaxing pleasure. Like Jusant, it's a meditative, peaceful game of exploration that's focused on taking it easy, reading the environment carefully, and being in the moment. Like Jusant, it has a beautiful art style, foregoing detail in favor of chunky, tactile modeling washed in pastel colors and rich sunset hues.

In a way, Over the Hill is an even more minimal game. Jusant has a sparse, near-wordless narrative; Over the Hill doesn't even have that. Jusant is also a crafted, linear experience with a start and a definitive end. Over the Hill is just a sequence of large maps you can explore at will, dotted with things to discover and do. It's playable in four-player co-op, which I didn't get to try but imagine is a fun hangout experience. Played alone, though, it's a gloriously quiet and soothing experience.

Over the Hill is the chill-out game of 2026

Over the Hill is made by Funselektor, a Vancouver-based indie specializing in cool, retro motorsport games. You might know the studio from Art of Rally, a rally game with a top-down view. Art of Rally is extremely stylish but lacks the handling bite necessary to make an old-school arcade racer like this work; I prefer this year's grungier, sharper Super Woden: Rally Edge.

Funselektor risks coming off like a hipster poseur in an enthusiast world, and that might be the conclusion you'd jump to if you compared Over the Hill with hardcore offroading sims like Saber Interactive's MudRunner and SnowRunner. But Over the Hill comes from a different place, and the studio's approach works much better here than it did with Art of Rally. Founder Dune Casu is a motorsport enthusiast and self-described "adventure seeker" who sometimes works out of a camper van, developing games as he roams around the U.S., Canada, and Mexico. Over the Hill is a game about driving a 4x4 over difficult terrain, sure, but it's also — moreso — a game about communing with a landscape as you move through it.

Like Art of Rally, it's full of unlicensed, pleasingly toylike models of iconic vehicles of the late 20th century: the starting car is a faux Land Rover Defender, and over time you can unlock lookalikes of such classics as the Toyota Land Cruiser, Ford Bronco, even the Unimog truck. Jump in and start exploring, following bumpy trails or heading completely off track. The controls are pretty simple: high and low gear, headlamps, handbrake, and a winch to get you out of trouble.

As you explore you find cabins, which act as fast-travel points and can also be stayed at to advance time. Over the Hill has a day/night cycle and sometimes inclement weather that can make progress difficult, although seeing its stunning landscapes across all these changing conditions is a big part of the fun. You also come across crates, which unlock new cosmetic customizations for your vehicles: mudflaps, bicycle racks, roof racks stuffed with camping gear or crates of beer. Sometimes you find an abandoned vehicle you need to tow to a cabin, or a challenge trail.

All of these discoveries reward currency which can be used to upgrade your vehicle with a stronger engine, better tires, better protection against waterlogging the engine, and so on. Importantly, you can also unlock inventory slots for items that can get you out of a jam when things get tough: a jack for repositioning a flipped truck, planks, a portable winch point, a bell that clears the weather. These become vital when things get tough.

Yes, as relaxing as it is, Over the Hill can get tough. The challenge trails in particular step things up a gear, as you pick your way over a swamp on a rotting boardwalk, rock-crawl up a mountain pass, or inch along a desert cliff at a precarious angle. Just go slow and watch the terrain carefully.

There's a bigger meta-challenge to the game, too, which is to solve the puzzle of its environments. This isn't immediately apparent in the first map, a steep-sided mountain valley in the Canadian Rockies. But move to the Algerian desert and the map becomes a kind of layered riddle, with points of interest located high up on stone mesas that tower above the sand dunes. Figuring out how to reach them involves some intricate, three-dimensional mental mapping as well as planning and driving skill.

If you run out of exploring inspiration, or want to grind out upgrades for a new vehicle, you can also equip a meteorite radar, which drops a valuable space rock at a random location on the map and gives you only a compass direction with which to find it. This would be particularly fun as a co-op activity, but even solo, it's a great way to refresh your perspective on the landscape, especially on a map you've already thoroughly explored. You can also take photos of local wildlife to fill a modest compendium.

That is absolutely all there is to Over the Hill, and this minimalism is the game's best feature. It's a game gloriously devoid of feature creep or noise, of time limits or competition: a refreshing, head-clearing space. In its quietly rugged way, it's the perfect cozy game. You watch your valiant little 4x4 crawl and bounce across a luscious wilderness as the sun rises and ambient guitar music wafts through the speakers and feel your heart fill with a kind of entranced patience. There's no rush. You'll get there in the end.

Over the Hill is out now on Windows PC. (Nintendo Switch 2, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X versions are due in 2027.) The game was reviewed using a prerelease download code provided by Funselektor. You can find additional information about Polygon’s ethics policy here.