It's 2026. Five plane tickets cost more than a mortgage payment, so the family vote is unanimous and non-binding: you're driving. Two thousand miles from Independence, Missouri to Oregon City, in a 2009 minivan with 190,000 miles and a check engine light that stopped being a warning and became a personality.
Gas Snacks & Tears is a deadpan comedy roguelite — a love letter to the trail games you played on a beige computer in 1989, except this time it isn't dysentery that gets you. It's gas station sushi, glowing with possibility.
Manage six things, all of which only go down
Gas, Cash, Snacks, Van Condition, Morale, and Phone Battery.
The van makes a new noise. You name it like a pet and keep driving.
The family IS the difficulty setting
Dad won't ask for directions — and that quietly closes off your options.
Mom can coupon. The Teen runs on phone battery. The Kid steals snacks and asks "are we there yet" until it does measurable damage.
Grandma keeps a hard-candy reserve and the constitution of a moth.
Every stop is a small, informed bad decision
Over 200 hand-written events, each a real trade-off: cash versus morale, time versus risk.
Eat the four-hour-old buffet shrimp to save eight dollars, or don't. The buffet is informed consent.
Outcomes are funny-bad, never unfair-bad.
Every death earns one star
Nobody dies of anything heroic. They die of gas station sushi, of a sugar reservoir the size of a toddler, of morale hitting zero somewhere outside Cheyenne.
Each doomed run becomes a roadside memorial — a 1-star review — that shows up on the shoulder of the highway in your next run.
Eight ways for it to end
The Perfect Vacation. We Made It... Barely. Portland, But At What Cost. The Van Outlived Us All. Plus a couple you have to earn the hard way.
A different doomed road trip every time
Roguelite runs of one to three hours. Pixel art and a CRT you can feel.
Unlock new families and worse vehicles by surviving — or, more often, by not.
The sign at the Oregon border says "Welcome to Oregon — Now Go Home." You've come too far to listen.
