If you haven’t been paying attention to Lithic Entertainment’s Scaravan 66, you ought to. The car combat-focused roguelike is a fast and frenetic ride through a version of hell informed by 1950s greaser aesthetics and 1980s British punk rock, and it feels fantastic. I’ve only played a demo of the game, but the explosive and high-octane combat already has its hooks in me and I’m eager to jump into the full experience. Admittedly, the narrative elements of the game haven’t quite wowed me yet, but what’s there potentially sets up something that could be interesting in the context of the full game.
In Scaravan 66, you play as Lucky D, a leather jacket-wearing, pompadour-rocking Road Reaper condemned to harvest mortal souls for the Devil. But you’re tired of it, and so you’ve opted to escape the seemingly endless highway of the underworld. The Devil sends her minions to stop you, ranging from explosive barrel-throwing zombies to gun-wielding lycanthropes. During her escape, Lucky D can pull off at exits to speak to other Road Reapers and denizens of Hell, each of which has unique perks to purchase and a personal story to tell. As a roguelike, Lucky D is forced to start over after each failed escape attempt, learning more about Hell and her fellow Road Reapers, as well as permanently upgrading her weapons and car with each subsequent loop.
“Scaravan 66 features the classic roguelike gameplay loop, complemented by the thematic drudgery of cycles,” Lithic Entertainment co-founders Al Bellemare and Andy Wood emailed me in a joint response. “Cycles we feel trapped in, cycles we want to break free from. Life circumstances that we did not choose, but must continuously face every day.”
I had a blast swerving into enemy cars, blasting hellhounds, and lighting up the highway with colorful explosions. Scaravan 66’s third-person perspective lets you keep an eye on the road immediately in front of and around you, while a rear-view mirror provides a peek at anyone on your tail–the twin-stick shooter controls allow you to drive, aim, and shoot all at once, so the action doesn’t have to slow down. It’s a bit of a rush and more than a little overwhelming starting out, but grasping the basics of the controls isn’t all that difficult. With each loop, I got a little bit better at driving and shooting simultaneously, so I could begin to focus on formulating an ideal build for myself by the demo’s end. I most enjoyed using Lucky D’s shotgun and power rifle, both of which had a slower fire rate than the burst rifle but packed a satisfying audible and visual punch. Between reloads, I’d hit the gas and ram Lucky D’s car into anyone who dared get a little too close or toss out some fireworks to pick off weakened targets trying to keep their distance.
I devoted most of my permanent perks to armor, health, and extra lives to increase my survivability while asking my fellow Road Reapers for run-specific upgrades that could do small damage over time, like a bone spear on Lucky D’s car to rust away anyone with necrotic damage if they happened to scrape her car’s paint. I couldn’t grab my favorite perks every run given the random nature of a roguelike, but the game seems to have mostly effective abilities in terms of offense, defense, and healing so having to adapt on the fly was rarely an issue. Even if I wasn’t familiar with any of the options I was presented with, I could see how each could be useful and formulate a build around the choice I liked the most at that moment.
“Players won’t ever really know which upgrade-giver they are going to encounter until they are right at the turn-off,” Bellemare and Wood said. “While the physical offramps and locations are consistent, some Reapers only appear at certain stops, so if you pay enough attention, you could make some guesses at the odds of who is at which stops. Although not present in the demo, we also have an adaptive enemy system that re-balances based on the performance or choices of the player. This is in fact the Devil herself. She is always watching, and spitefully ordering around minions based on Lucky’s progress. So beware if the Devil rears her head along the horizon, staring down like a merciless giant–she’s about to edit your experience.”
Bellemare and Wood explained that Lucky’s car is magically tethered to her, similar to a scythe for a grim reaper. Consequently, most of the game centers around Lucky’s car. Many available upgrades improve what it can do, and even if Lucky is armed to the teeth with multiple firearms, the car is her main source of protection and dealing damage. It’s also pretty fast, though I rarely veered off the road or felt like I was out of control.
“With the kind of speeds we are working with in Scaravan 66, if we weren’t careful, players would be flying off the roads and into the treeline at every turn or any time they were focused on battle,” Bellemare and Wood said. “We’ve designed the control scheme so that the car always drives forward to ease the player’s need to constantly press forward as that is narratively the only direction that Lucky is willing to go anyway. Moving left or right is up to the player and they can also choose to break-check or boost forward until their engine overheats. But always forward. We’ve also created a system to help gently guide the car away from the treeline so the car never ends up flailing around in the middle of nowhere, missing all the action.”
Speaking of the treeline, Bellemare and Wood told me that Lucky D will explore areas beyond the forest and encounter memorable boss battles on her journey, though I did not experience either of those in the demo I played.
“There are three biomes, which in the final game will have some variations not yet available in the demo,” they explained. “Lucky starts her journey in the woods, as many heroes do. The woods being a place where change and transformation take place, fitting for the beginning of Lucky’s rebellion. As she continues along the highway, she will come upon her second biome: the desert. A flat land that stretches into the distance, caged in mountain ranges. The desert embodies the mid-journey difficulties, the blue skies of new beginnings behind you and the destination still so far ahead and out of reach. The last biome is the false paradise of the coast. A mirage of beauty and sanctuary, this final biome is deceptively dangerous. Goofy, colorful characters and bright white shining smiles hide the true hazards of this place.”
Like I said at the top, the narrative is where I’m most worried about Scaravan 66, because it seems a little sparse in comparison to everything else. However, that could be from what I played being a demo–there were additional gameplay options in the hub area between runs I could not access because they were quarantined off for the demo, so it stands to reason that not all of the story was there either. I dig the character designs, and the voice acting is pretty good, so I’m hopeful that Lucky D’s escape from Hell is supposed to be more narratively rewarding than the demo makes it out to be. But even if it isn’t, the gameplay feels like it’s more than enough to keep me entertained for hours.
Scaravan 66 is set to launch for PC in 2025. You can check out the demo I played during Steam Next Fest, which kicks off February 24.