The road to Haven is paved with dead references.

So, you and four of your... friends... hop into a station wagon (which is similar in its appearance and function to a hearse) to survive a post-apocalyptic road trip from Washington, D.C. to a place dully named Safe Haven in Oregon, but why? Why Oregon? Is it because beavers are immune to zombie bites? Do walkers appreciate the diverse environment far too much to litter it with their decay? Is it because everyone loves Tillamook Cheese and fully believes in its I-totally-made-this-up-for-my-shitty-little-blog promise to one day rid of us all of these infected, cheese-snubbin' shufflers by fortifying their "baby loaf" buses with barred windows, steel-covered headlights, wedge plows, thick tires, and secondary batteries? ...because it's not California? I may never learn the reason, nor care for that matter, but I just finished my fifth trip through the radiated nation, and it is apparent that my friends and associates are all a bunch of food-gobbling, irresponsible halfwits.

An awful lot of dicking with these folks.
Also, only Sir Barnes the Noble managed to avoid being a burden.
I'm not sure how he did it, but I'm grateful for his cooperation and understanding.

Then again, it seems as though I might not be much better than them. What I thought was merely a fun way to include the pricks I loathed marginally less than the rest of humanity turned out to be my number of lives.

See, the option to continue doesn't present itself until I've entered four names, so it wasn't until I tried to earn the Loner achievement by killing off my party right from the start that I realized every random problem now fell on me for the entire trip. I may not have been "dicking around" with the goods, but there were plenty of bandits to rob me of my fuel, food would constantly go bad, and my vehicle continued to fall apart within the first week, as if it was made in America... as if it was... hey, wait a fucking min... so, regardless of who you decide to bring along, just know that they're there to suffer for you up until you're about to reach the end. At that point, heal everyone up, gun them down, and cross the finish line. You've successfully unlocked the Loner achievement. Yippie skippie!

I suppose I ought to mention that I'm typing about Organ Trail: Director's Cut, a zombie spoof of the Seventies classic The Oregon Trail, but you all already knew that. I'm sure of it. (I'm not actually sure of it, which is why I typed all of this just now.)

Originally, Organ Trail was a free Flash game that made its way onto Facebook, but this version aped every aspect of its inspiration. The Director's Cut managed a successful Kickstarter that earned well over its $3000 goal in order to craft a parody that could now stand on its own with new features, like making the developers money and spending that money. Granted, it was ported to other platforms; added new diseases, boss fights, and mini off-road text adventures; provided a wonderfully eerie soundtrack; and featured not only a second, female version of the title screen, along with four options for your team's leader, but also personalized tombstones for other players to stop and check out during their trip. All of these features were covered in the Kickstarter promises, but not much else was done to properly fix the small mistakes after that.

The Men Who Wear Many Hats put the game up for sale at a mere $5, then charged $6 for the soundtrack and added an expansion for $5. The pricing isn't bad. but a little polish is still to be expected. Typos and minor grammatical errors are one thing. Anyone can have a few of those in their work, however, I also found options that wouldn't function properly, such as the volume settings during a playthrough, and attempting to click the Leaderboards button only led me to a blank screen that I couldn't get out of without closing the game entirely. What irritates many of the game's negative reviewers is that the achievements with counters don't function, and I can understand why. If Mockery and the rest of Skeleton Crew Studios can handle this flawlessly for Grave Chase, AND do so without an additional $16000 (minus the fees and KS cut, of course), what's the excuse for The Men Who Wear Many Hats?

Why did there need to be fifteen Steam trading cards for this game? 

Lastly, the developers have provided no responses to any of this on the discussion boards. At best, the DLC provided some fixes alongside gameplay changes. With all that in mind, I think it's fair for some to believe this whole thing stinks of laziness and greed and...

...possibly beans. 

Admittedly, these are all just minor flaws. If you're not distracted by achievements and decorations for your Steam profile, then expect to have a great time.

The long-named developers clear did.

While reaching Safe Haven may be your focus, most of the mini games you'll encounter are reasonable, if not enjoyable. Too bad the biker gang event is boring as fuck.

Sure, it's fine the first time, but there's nothing to it outside of wasting five minutes of your time. The objective is to allow these fine gentlemen to aggressively ram into your car's ass by going up and down. That's all. It's neither challenging, nor rewarding, and none of them call you the next day... presumably from dying on the road, but that's not going to help my wagon's self-esteem, now is it?

In the Easy and Normal modes, surviving is simply a matter of stocking up on supplies through scavenging. You might be attacked by a bear or a pair of wolves, but there's plenty to find on the ground, and bullets are not too troublesome to come by, either. The Difficult, Suicide, and Endless modes bring with them fewer rewards, faster enemies, radiation, and several more bandits who will just rob you of everything within moments of leaving a town.

These fuckers are relentless.

It's important to take advantage of every hour the zombie activity is low, to make sensible trades when they're available, to be the bad guy when you go exploring (I never do, because I constantly want to be the hero... and I suffer from it more often than not), to upgrade early on, and, sometimes, you gotta cut your losses for the sake of everyone else.

Just kidding! I'll find a way to keep this train wreck going long after I'm dead.

Endless mode even provides modifers (like having every member of your team already bitten by zombies) to change the experience and increase your point value at the end. These scores are then added to the leaderboards... that I couldn't check, because the game turned into a blank screen. Honestly, that's not something I'm interested in, but I'm sure plenty of other people are, or were.

Completing the campaign mode unlocks a mini game with Clements, the unfortunate fellow who rescues your leader prior to the trip. It's just a simplified, physics-based version of Organ Trail with your station wagon flying over and plowing through zombies, but I found it to be charming. 

While the epitaphs on numerous tombstones can provide some humorous reads, there's also plenty of references to find throughout the journey.

Several pertain to other zombie games, like Resident Evil and Left 4 Dead, but zombie films, memes, and other games are scattered throughout, as well. Finding them all just adds to an already high replay value.

I'm not sure about the expansion. I'm assuming it addresses the issues I've found with the Director's Cut, but I think I've had my fill of it. I did appreciate the cooperation of everyone who joined me on trips across the US, and I apologize for the loss of our dear artist Chops.

I would, but Schierke isn't real, Chops! Your waifus are not real women!
Stop it!