In Neo Cab from Fellow Traveler, you play as Lina who is a driver for this dystopian future’s Uber as she moves to Los Ojos. However, upon her arrival, her best friend goes missing, thus leaving Lina homeless and hunting for clues one passenger at a time.
A copy of this game was provided by the publisher for this review
I saw a few other bloggers write about Neo Cab, and it definitely sounded like an interesting game that I would enjoy. I enjoy dystopian stories and the mystery of this game sounded like it would be fun to solve.
Savy, you activist BFF working against the technology giant Capra, disappears suddenly after initially reuniting with Lina and Capra is certainly involved. From mysterious boyfriends to her involvement in Radix, there is a lot about her you don’t know.
As Lina, you spend night after night driving for Neo Cab and picking up passengers that can hopefully help you find Savy, along the way. From a nomadic photographer to a 13-year-old activist to a quantum statistician witch, you are not short on interesting nights and useful information. However, depending on how you interact with your passenger will affect whether you get the help you need. This is where your FeelGrid comes in, as it tracks your feelings and emotions and you can use it to gauge your reactions. But the stronger the feelings, the more specific reactions you have to have.
If searching for your best friend wasn’t enough, you also have to keep an eye on your cash, your car charge, and your star rating. Not having enough money to fill up your charge or not having enough charge to reach certain passengers impacts your choices, so the management of these is important. There are also moments when some passengers can only be picked up when you have 5 stars. Some passengers are at a higher risk of plummeting your rating. And your interactions with them during the drive will affect all of this. You do get to choose your passengers, and this can enable you to see certain passengers multiple times and grow that relationship.
Overall, I really enjoyed the story and where this mystery went and resolved. I also really enjoyed being able to make certain choices to have the ending go my way a bit more. The story was satisfying as a whole.
One big issue with Neo Cab is the dialog discrepancies and Lina forgetting info she learned. It is as if certain paths weren’t detailed enough to account for certain conversations happening before others, so it ended up with Lina forgetting information. This happened numerous times and did break a certain level of immersion because I would think “Yeah, we learned that already” but Lina somehow didn’t know anymore. At least this didn’t do the opposite, where Lina spoiled or skipped information that we never learned, which would have been worse.
Even with that issue, I still enjoyed the game and the adventure it took me on. I wish it was longer actually and that I could have interacted with more people multiple times to really have a more in-depth experience. I know there were interactions and scenes I missed because I couldn’t pick up Allie or Gideon or anyone else another time. I enjoyed the world and story and I wanted to spend more time in it.
Neo Cab is available on the Switch and Steam.
Have you played a game where you really wanted to experience the world more? Share it with a comment below.
This game looks really neat.