Road 96 reminds me of my angry, powerless teenage years

digitaltrends.com:

When I was in high school about 10 or so years ago, I discovered an anarcho-folk punk musician by the name of Pat “The Bunny” Schneeweis. His songs were about homelessness, misery, and that youthful desperate desire for change, even if it has to be forced. But there was this futility to all of his songs. He would sing about overthrowing the system, if he could, or destroying his car if he didn’t need it. At this time, his music was filled with that kind of anger young people often have, and as a kid, it spoke to me.

Of course, I couldn’t always relate to it. I grew up a middle-class straight white male in the suburbs of Long Island. I never worried about food or rent, the howling of dogs, or the sounds of gunfire. I was safe and secure in my basement bedroom. I was also miserable and furious at just about everything, with the government topping that list.

During my recent playthrough of Road 96, which comes to Xbox and PlayStation consoles today, I couldn’t stop thinking about myself, Pat The Bunny, and the powerlessness of being a teenager. Sure, there are kids out there doing incredible things. But most of them — most of us at the time — were ordinary, and couldn’t change the minds of our parents, let alone a government. Every runaway in Road 96 is coping with that fact, and it’s that weakness that drives the game forward.

If you’ve never heard of Road 96, it’s a roguelike-ish game where you fill the shoes of multiple teenagers who range in age from 15 to 18 — as they try to escape their home country of Petria, driven away by its tyrannical government. Leading that government is the not-so-subtly named Tyrak, whose name doesn’t just sound like “tyrant” but is also five letters long and starts with a T, like another