You’ve just finished graduate school. You’ve got a great job working for a company that consults with federal government agencies, and things are looking up. Oh no! 55,000 federal employees are fired from the federal government. Oh no! Your job calls you one week after graduation and tells you they are revoking your job offer. Oh no! All your job experience is working for the federal government, which then shuts down, and it’s really hard to find something in a sector of the economy that isn’t melting down.
So, you do the natural thing. You wait for your lease to end, pack up your belongings, and go on a month-long road trip with a good friend from New York City to Mobile, Alabama. The number one question on your mind: What are the best road trip video games to play in 2025?
Okay, so maybe this scenario is actually hyper-specific to me. And maybe I don’t actually know the best road trip games to play. But I do know the five I played, and I’m going to go ahead and rank them for you.
Now, hop in the car, buckle up, and get ready to blast down I-85. Bring your gaming laptop, some beef jerky, and a Red Bull. The only music in the car is a Muppets greatest hits CD, so get ready to party!
5. Lies of P
Great game, bad for the road trip. First of all, you don’t have a controller. You’re playing on a laptop with a mouse and keyboard. Lies of P (2023) runs, but not well. This is a soulslike that demands precision parry timing. You make it about halfway through the game on a wing and a prayer until Victor shoulder-checks you into the wall so hard and so frequently it makes your IRL teeth chatter, and you give up.
Moving right along footloose and fancy-free, you boot out Pinnoccio in Delaware. Only real boys are allowed on the highway.
4. Crusader Kings II
By this point you’re feeling kind of depressed about the aforementioned unemployment, and you need some comfort food. Let’s inject 50 ccs of nostalgia straight to the heart to make you feel again, that sort of thing. You whip out a game you haven’t played since… wow, like freshman year of college. One that was great to wile away those drunken Friday nights in with some feudalism and fratricide — Crusader Kings II (2012). Unfortunately, Paradox has spent the past ten years releasing over $200 of DLC that you don’t own and morphing the mechanics into something barely recognizable. After a couple hours of frustrating gameplay where half of the options are locked behind a pay wall, it’s time to commit some grand patricide against the grand-daddy of grand strategy games.
There’s got to be something better than this. You leave Crusader Kings II mangled in a ditch in Virginia. Time for a new bloodline.
3. Against the Storm
Since nostalgia didn’t do the trick, maybe you’ve got to try something relatively new. Against the Storm (2021) popped up on sale and you figured you’d give this settlement management game a try.
It’s really neat. Pretty good for a road trip. You can start and stop whenever you feel like it, the music and art are cool, and the gameplay is really engaging. However, learning to play this super complicated game in a car is maybe just a bit more difficult than you’re looking for at this point. There are a ton of resources, species, quests, and modifiers. It’s great but maybe just a bit too much for right now, you know.
You can feel a connection, but it’s not the right time. You drop off Against the Storm somewhere dry and hidden from the rain at a diner in North Carolina, certain your paths will cross again.
2. Opus Magnum
Now, you know you need something a bit more stripped down. Not necessarily easier but with fewer mechanics to worry about. Per Steam recommendations, you pick up Opus Magnum (2017), and it’s just groovy. You can check out more details about why this game just hit, but really, it’s also perfect for a road trip. Easy to start and stop on a whim. Fun to mull over while hiking or driving. No overly complicated story to mull over. Addicting puzzle gameplay. Amazing stuff.
You feel happiness again. This is it; This is love. You walk Opus Magnum to its aunt’s house in Georgia. She invites you in for freshly transmuted sweet tea. As you leave, a single tear rolls down your face. Opus Magnum snags your tears to use in an alchemy recipe for perfume.
1. Slay the Spire
In tough times, you need an old friend. One who’s been there through thick and thin. Old reliable — Slay the Spire (2017). No matter what happens, Neow will always be there to bestow her blessings upon you one more time. Start and stop over the course of a busy day, play for hours at a time. It’s all cool. Slay the Spire is just happy you had some time to drop by. It’s been too long since you hung out. How’s your mom doing? I heard your brother got engaged? Grab a beer, and we’ll burn down a tower full of enemies.
It’s good to be together again. Slay the Spire makes it all the way to Mobile and pulls up a chair at the Thanksgiving table…right after you put that time warping slug in its place one more time.
Matt has loved video games since he played Super Smash Bros. on an Nintendo 64 in the year 2000. Today, the games he plays most often are puzzlers, Souls-likes, and roguelikes, but he really loves any single-player game that's challenging and/or has a great story.
When he's not gaming, Matt's a public policy nerd who will talk your ear off about how well-designed government forms are the lost gateway to utopia.
