Things could get pretty bleak in classic text adventure The Oregon Trail, with dwindling supplies, damaging storms, and hostile entities making the frontier journey a test of resource management and strategy. Dying of dysentery was only one of the risks, along with (depending on which of the many versions you played) broken limbs, typhoid, or starvation.
Wagon, which launches this week on Steam, is a spiritual successor to The Oregon Trail, where the word spiritual is pretty literal. There’s a strong thread of the occult running through the 1-bit adventure: the calendar you mark the passage of time with has a pentagram on it, and that’s just for starters.
And while The Oregon Trail would eventually get bleak, Wagon starts off bleak as hell from the jump. The demo I played opens with a few starving settlers drawing straws to see who will be killed and eaten by the others.
Even worse, as the person holding the straws, I can fix the game of chance to make sure I’m not the one who becomes dinner. Sorry, Jerry.
With that nasty business out of the way, it’s time to build a titular wagon and get it moving, which involves playing and combining cards. Wagon reminds me a lot of Sokpop Collective’s survival card game Stacklands. To make a plank I play a saw card with two log cards. To generate ore, I put a “human” card on a mine card. To pull my wagon I need to play an ox card on top of it and add another human to lead it. Before long, we’re rolling toward Oregon.
I’m playing this card game in the back of the wagon, by the way, where a strange and I suspect demonic entity that looks like a little girl shows me the ropes. She appeared after I chopped up my fellow traveler with an axe and then (perhaps foolishly) used a Ouija board to contact the spirits.
The recipes I use to combine cards are all listed in my book of Rites, which has an ominous eyeball on the cover and a prayer on the last page that cites “Omogenu” as my father and mentions a serpent. I think I was doomed long before my party started eating itself.
But it’s fun! If you like survival, and cards, and The Oregon Trail, and don’t mind occasionally eating an innocent person, check out Wagon, which launches April 30. There’s a demo on the Steam page if you want a little nibble before you fill your belly.
