This is a game I’ve been waiting on for a long time. I’m a big fan of Funselektor. Growing up, I spent so much time playing Absolute Drift, and while I haven’t played Art of Rally as much, I’ve had a lot of fun with it here and there. When I started seeing posts about Over the Hill, I got excited immediately. I’ve been an avid fan of Spintires and the whole series that followed, and Over the Hill looked like a combination of Big Walk and Spintires/Mudrunner/Snowrunner.

Funselektor recently opened a public beta and I’ve gotten a chance to play it. The demo is a bit brief, but I’m happy to be able to try it before the final release and I can definitely see the potential.

That said, here are several things I noticed while playing that I wanted to note down to see how the game evolves from demo to official release. Please keep in mind that all of these comments are simply my opinions.

  • The tutorial feels very forced, and I can’t quite put my finger on it, but the car feels unresponsive during it.
  • Sometimes when message boxes appear, the controls become unresponsive for a second or so after they disappear.
  • The speed at which the steering wheel turns makes the car feel unwieldy and doesn’t quite match the style of the game. I wish I could speed it up a bit, but it looks like the steering sensitivity is set to 100% by default and doesn’t go higher.
  • The mud feels too slippery in the beginning tutorial area. I feel like I should be able to slowly tread through it in low gear without a winch, with the winch just making it faster. Right now it feels like you can’t get out without using the winch at all.
  • The controls need tooltips to make it easier to hand off to someone else, like a younger kid. For example, switching between low and high gear should have an indicator, as should opening the radio menu, with tooltips for each item either on hover or always shown.
  • Frame rate seems low but may be acceptable for a demo. I was able to lower the resolution and graphics settings to get above 60fps. Currently running high graphics at 1440p on an RTX 3080.
  • The handbrake control isn’t prominent and you’re left trying to remember it since it differs from most games (right on the d-pad). I should have expected it to be “B” on the Xbox controller by default. I think the tooltip would help with this.
  • Opening the radio menu with the right stick feels clunky. It would feel more natural to hold the left stick and use the right stick to select, similar to many other games.
  • Even in the hilly tutorial area, the ground feels more slippery than it looks. It might be because the ground doesn’t deform much or at all, but it feels unintuitive.
  • When hovering over items at the merchant that haven’t been unlocked yet, nothing is shown at all. I’d expect to see them listed but locked, so you can at least browse. This might be an intentional demo limitation.
  • In manual transmission, I can’t shift into first gear, and I also can’t shift above second. I’d expect the vehicle to just bog down if it can’t maintain a higher gear rather than blocking the shift entirely.
  • In photo mode, when you have the wheel turned and open the pause menu, the wheel resets. It would be great if the wheel position held so you can get better positioning for photos.
  • In the photo mode, it take a while to change the time, since the slider moves very slowly. It should be nice to have it move exponentially faster the longer you hold it.
  • The lens flare from the headlights is very strong. It makes it difficult to take photos facing the headlights.
  • I really like how far you can zoom out the camera while driving.
  • I’m excited to learn the story behind why our character is here. Is it a Firewatch type situation?

Overall, the car physics are satisfying, the photo mode is fun, and I can see the vision. I’m so excited to see what Funselektor does with this and I’m looking forward to driving around with friends when it releases.