I have to make a confession: I’ve never liked the RTS genre. There’s way too much meandering around and not enough action. I feel that with most RTS games like C&C and StarCraft, you spend quite a bit of time building your units before you actually start the action part of the game about five minutes later (rushing takes a lot less time, but the results are varied).

And I absolutely HATE it when your opponents can easily cripple you by taking out your resources, while you are busy trying to make a remote base. It throws you into this scenario where you either have to cheese it or sell your units to bulk up your defenses for your main base. I’m more of a turn based strategy gamer, so I like the fact that someone cannot pull a game winning move while I’m busy doing something else.

With DETOUR, there is no wait time for an object to be established, no “welp, there goes my base”, or resources that need to be collected by scavengers. You constantly get a flow of money that allows you to have access to whatever the hell you want, right now.

And it’s incredibly fun, because the gameplay gives you this sensation of being in control but at the same moment, being surrounded by chaos. At any point in time you have to deduce whether you should build roads, destroy your opponents’ trucks, manipulate the cops or all of the above in your quest to get your trucks to the other side of the board first.

The campaign is good too, though some people might find it a tad easy. However, the writing is what takes the cake, and the kooky characters you encounter are quite a delight.

The biggest problem with DETOUR is the longevity. Unless this game is picked up but a good community, I don’t see it living very long.

Fortunately, the developers already have a pretty solid gathering building up, so I’m not too worried. But even if there aren’t a lot of people, you can still play with bots and with the built-in map editor, you can come up with a lot of crazy scenarios.

Overall, with the great music, outstanding writing, chaotic gameplay and extremely cheap price tag, DETOUR definitely feels like it’s worth a purchase.

Verdict: BUY. You can check it out on Steam by clicking here.