site banner

Friday Fun Thread for August 22, 2025

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

2
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Gaming subthread.

Started playing Route 96, a coming of age story + illegal emigration simulator. The idea is that you traverse the same route multiple times with different characters, interacting with NPCs in ways that change future playthroughs. Pretty enjoyable so far.

Road 96 is an adventure video game played from a first-person perspective. The game's campaign has the player assume the role of several teenage hitchhikers attempting to flee the authoritarian nation of Petria without being arrested or killed

It sounds incredibly naive. If emigration is actually illegal, the border involves things such as

  • self-attacking dogs (they chill in their kennels until it's time to maul a border intruder who unwisely tripped an alarm releasing them)
  • a 'fake' dummy border, to make the intruders think they've made it
  • electric fences, silent tripwires, flare tripwires
  • sometimes, patrols unloading at the intruders with machineguns

It does actually get so bad people would hijack aircraft to get out, or fly a hang glider over it, or if they're a pilot, steal their plane. Usually, though, people just left through a foreign country they could travel to but which did not have prison camp style border. In the real world, this was Yugoslavia.

It's totally unrealistic. Not once did the player character need to take a shit despite the length of the journey.

They need to do a crossover with My Summer Car.

Or Desert Bus.