Organ Trail

"Organ Trail", it's like Oregon Trail but with zombies. That pretty much sums it up. You pick a character to be your main, and you name 4 companions to travel with you in a beat up ol' station wagon. The world has gone to shit, and you need to make it across the country from east coast to west coast without getting bitten, shot, starving to death, or dying of cholera, measles, or a mean case of the shits.

You start out allocating a finite amount of points into food, money, ammo, fuel, scrap to fix your car, or various car parts that will undoubtedly blow up in your face along the road. You start out at an encampment, and it is from there you can buy, sell, or trade supplies, scavenge for food, rest your party, or perform odd jobs for people, risking life and limb for most likely very little reward. When you're ready to leave the safety of the encampment and take on the open road, there's no going back, only forward onto the next encampment.

The road is a terrible place with biker gangs that try to run you off the road, bandits that steal your shit or want to kidnap your people. Simply driving is apparently taxing as every bit of progress you make in miles or hours translates into wear on your companions. You'll need to manage when to stop and rest, when you need to scavenge for food, and when there's just too many zombies out and about and you just need crawl up into a ball and sob.

I played the game on Normal. My first time through, I made it to about St. Louis. I had a friend get bitten while taking a piss and subsequently, I had to put her down, another friend just wandered off and we had to leave her behind, another friend kept getting all the diseases but somehow pulled through each time only to die of exhaustion, and a fourth broke about every bone in her body, slowly dying as we drove, the medkits being long gone. The car is dangerous. I continued on alone, cut down by a horde of zombies while trying to find something to shove in my face hole. It did not go well.

My second playthrough was much more cautious and measured. I didn't get stuck out in the middle of nowhere looking for someone to trade me for gas. I paid the outrageous price for guzzleine every chance I got. I scavenged whenever my food was less than a shit ton. I didn't leave safe places when the horde was indicated as being ravenous. I didn't let my car reach the abhorrent levels of disrepair that my actual real-life car is in, and for the most part, it worked out. I still lost one to a bandit. I had the chance to save them, but I shot high, and then the bandit shot them. I'm not proud, but I am alive, and so are my 3 other dysentery-stricken friends.

Organ Trail was a relatively short game, but with the harder levels of difficulty available, you'll probably be glad that it's no longer. It was a good time, and if you played Oregon Trail as a kid, you'll probably get a kick out of it.