Over the Hill Review: The Best Co-op Drive in Years

This game is reviewed on:

I spent my first evening in Over the Hill barely moving and loved it. It's the new co-op off-road game from Funselektor Labs, the studio behind Art of rally, made together with Strelka Games, and it launched on Steam on October 14, 2026. I picked it up that day, so this Over the Hill review comes from most evenings since, on PC, alone and with friends.

You drive classic 4x4s inspired by the 1960s to 1980s through Canadian forests and Algerian desert. Nobody races you, and no fail screen waits at the end of a bad climb. The whole game asks one question: can you get this truck up that hill without wrecking it?

Below, you'll find how the driving feels, what the two regions hide, how Over the Hill co-op works, and whether it's worth your evenings.

Over The Hill Review Summary

• My verdict: 8/10. The most relaxing driving game I've played in a long time, and the hardest trails still make my palms sweat.

• Two regions at launch, Canada and Algeria, packed with cabins, vistas, crates, meteorites and wildlife to photograph.

• Online co-op for up to four players is the highlight: shared anchors, trucks pushing trucks and rescues that turn into stories.

• Pebbles pay for engine, suspension, and tire upgrades. Those upgrades stay on the truck you bought them for.

• The PC version ran smoothly from launch day; the October 16 patch fixed the worst bugs, and consoles follow in 2027.

Over the Hill Driving Rewards Patience

The driving clicked for me inside the first hour. Each truck handles like a heavy toy with real weight behind it, and the inputs answer the instant I touch the stick. You only pick between low and high gear. Everything else comes down to throttle control and line choice. I learned to feather the throttle on wet rock and to stop flooring it in mud. Sand and mud deform under the wheels, and my own tracks were still there when I came back the same way.

When a climb goes wrong, the winch saves me. It hooks onto a winch point, another player, or a ground anchor I set into the dirt myself. Anchors get me up ledges the engine never could. They're single-use, so I started planning climbs around how many I had left. Planks help me over obstacles my tires can't handle alone, and a repair kit patches the dents from rocks and trees. On my roof or stuck in a lake with no way out, I reset to the mechanic and tried again with a better plan.

Rain turned a slope I'd climbed in the morning into a slide. Snow piled up in Canada's mountain passes, and a sandstorm in Algeria cut my view down to the hood. Night driving changes the trail completely, and I misjudged more than one drop in the dark. Deep water needs respect too: the air intake has to stay above the surface, so I left the big river crossings alone until I'd fitted a snorkel.

Over the Hill Maps Reward Going Off-Trail

Over the Hill launches with two regions, Canada and Algeria, each split into separate maps linked by portals. Canada eases me in across three maps of forest, lakes, marsh and waterfalls before climbing into snow-capped mountains where deep drifts swallow an unprepared truck. Algeria is the deep end, with big desert maps full of dunes, rocky ruins and long horizons. I went in too early on stock suspension and spent an evening beached on sand.

Cabins and campsites work as fast-travel points and spawns. They restock my tools, and I can sleep there to skip to day or night or sit out a storm. Every new one I found pushed my comfort zone a little further into the map.

Vistas, crates, and animals pulled me off the marked route constantly. Crates hold cosmetics like horn sounds and bed loads such as kayaks. Wildlife goes into a compendium through a film-style camera, and I've snapped deer, foxes, eagles, and camels. Meteorites glow orange at night. Pulling one out of the ground with the winch feels like a small event every time.

A Steam player called Shady wrote that getting lost in the woods led them to a Bigfoot and then left them even more lost. I can confirm the sasquatch exists, and I found it the same way. The desert repeats itself sooner than Canada does. Two regions feel thin for driving this good.

Co-op Turns Over the Hill Into Stories

Over the Hill supports online co-op for up to four players, and my best nights came from it. Each player keeps their own progress and map, so nobody has to share a save to join a session. Play is online only, as the Steam listing has no local or split-screen option.

In a convoy, one truck scouts ahead and the rest hang back with winches ready. A second vehicle can push a stuck one up an incline. Anchors one player places stay in the world for everyone else, so the lead driver ends up building the route. Meteorites need more pulling force with more players in the session, which keeps the whole group on the winch together.

A Steam player called stealyourfries described twenty minutes wedged in a crevice before winching out with a friend, then another half hour lost to a dead-end climb. My first co-op night went almost exactly like that. A friend nosed his truck into a gully. Two of us spent ages rigging a rescue from bad angles, laughing through every failed attempt. Another player, Hexed, wrote about a desert trail where their wife repaired and towed them all the way through, and they completed it twice.

At launch, clients could get stuck on an endless loading screen after camping and then taking a portal, a bug the first patch fixed. The radial menu is the bigger annoyance. When I'm tethered, I lose both the camera and that menu, so I can't help a friend pick a better anchor point until I unhook.

Over the Hill Vehicles Reset Your Upgrades

Progress runs on pebbles, the in-game currency. I earn them from vistas, crates, trail challenges, recovery missions, meteorites, and wildlife photos. A roving mechanic sells upgrades for the engine, suspension, tires, winch range, and snorkel. More engine got my starter truck up hills it couldn't climb before. Raised suspension made Algeria playable.

The vehicles are unlicensed, but familiar classics from the 1960s to 1980s, and harder challenges reward me with new ones. Trail challenges run checkpoint to checkpoint through gorges and mountain passes, from a few minutes to around half an hour. Recovery missions ask me to tow an abandoned vehicle back to a cabin. Trails never warn me about difficulty before I start, and I've rolled into one far beyond my truck more than once.

Upgrades belong to the vehicle, and that's my biggest design complaint. Switching to a new truck means paying for its engine and suspension from scratch. Some places my old truck reached are off limits again until I do. I stuck with one truck far longer than I planned, which is the opposite of what a new reward should do.

Crate cosmetics carry across every vehicle and cost nothing to apply, so the garage still feels like mine. The game supports livery mods natively, and fan-made paint jobs started showing up a day after launch.

Is Over the Hill Worth Buying Right Now?

Yes, if you want a slow, tactile driving game to unwind with, and doubly so if you have one to three friends to bring along. In co-op, it's the best shared drive I've had in years. It suits fans of Art of rally's free roam best, along with players who bounced off heavier off-road sims.

It ran smoothly on my RTX 4080 from launch day, and I never hit a crash. Funselektor publishes only a minimum tier (a GTX 1070 or RX 5600, a Core i5-7400 or Ryzen 5 2600, and 8GB of RAM), so my card sits far above anything the studio has listed. The October 16 patch fixed invisible terrain on some older GPUs, pebbles not paying out on repeat runs, the co-op loading hang, and some achievements for players who tried the Next Fest demo.

Wait if you want constant action or deep simulation, since the game never hurries and keeps its mechanics simple. Console players have to wait anyway: Funselektor's launch announcement puts the PS5, Xbox Series X|S and Nintendo Switch 2 versions in 2027. Solo players who clear content fast may also want to hold off until more regions arrive. For a co-op group, I'd pay full price without hesitation.

FAQs About Over The Hill

Final Words

Over the Hill makes slowness feel earned. Each climb is a small puzzle about grip and anchors, and solving one with a friend hanging off my bumper is the best feeling the game has.

I'd change the upgrade system first. Tying every upgrade to one truck punishes curiosity in a game built around wandering. A third region would cover the rest of my wish list.

If you start, take your time in Canada and put pebbles into suspension before Algeria. Keep a couple of anchors spare at all times, too. Funselektor fixed the launch bugs within two days, and its next content drop will decide how long this stays installed.

GameBoost Products

Over The Hill Game Key
View all GameBoost Game Keys
View all GameBoost Accounts
View all GameBoost Boosting Services
View all GameBoost Currencies
View all GameBoost Gift Cards
View all GameBoost Top Ups
View all GameBoost Items