Game Review - Wheels of Aurelia

Game Review: Wheels of Aurelia by Santa Ragione
Score: FAIL

Embark on an immersive road trip through the gritty western coast of Italy during the roaring 1970’s. Playing as Lella, a bold, spunky woman, experience the sights and sounds of a tumultuous time in Italy’s history while uncovering events from Lella’s past.

Immediate fail. Why?

Under "How to Play" it claims, "If you are not steering -- nor driving fast -- your car will automatically follow the road and allow you to concentrate on the conversations".
This is false.

• They can't even make your car follow the road (even though all the other vehicles do). It inches left or right with every turn and eventually can go not just past the dividing line but into the other lane. This fortunately does not result in a horrific and deadly accident immediately even when you bump other cars, but you can't really concentrate on the conversation and the opportunities to react pass by when you're forced to drive.
• Also, you drive faster than the other cars on the road, so you are forced to overtake them, or the auto-drive will get you into an accident. You can speed up but not slow down, so if cars are in both lanes and you actually can't overtake the car in front of you because there's nowhere to go, there's nothing you can do except rear end the car in front of you.

All this is silly.
And it detracts from the conversations in the game, which is where the real content is and therefore where our focus should be.

The interface is innovative and promising -- talking to the person while you're driving a car -- and you can get conversations coming up in different orders. (In comparison with other text-narrative visual novel games such as those from Japan where you go through a huge linear dialog tree to find the happy ending.)
But it's unfortunately ruined by the very thing that sets it apart -- the driving.

If you don't mind just letting your car pinball around and can concentrate on the dialogues, there might be something worth trying here. And it's richer if you understand the historical references as they are thrown at you -- but conversely it constantly throws you out of identifying with the protagonist Lella if you don't get those references because you really have no idea what you are actually talking about.
They have a collection of Wikipedia excerpts you can read but they are unlocked AFTER you make the dialog choice.

Whenever a game promotes itself up front with all sorts of awards and nominations from institutions you've probably never heard of -- beware.