The Road

A run is a chain of road legs between stops, and you personally drive the stagecoach down every one of them. Let us be honest about what driving amounts to: the route is chosen from a menu at every fork, fights and stories trigger themselves when you reach them, and the only thing the steering actually accomplishes is running over loot - or letting an obstacle run over you. One could ask whether this needed to be a driving game at all, or whether a Slay-the-Spire-style node map with a tasteful woodcut of a coach would have served. One could ask. The game wants you behind the reins, though, so the mod makes the reins audible.

Driving

The game's own keys drive: W and S (or Up/Down) for speed, A and D (or Left/Right) to steer. The mod adds an audio layer on top:

• A turning cue while the road bends, ending with a distinct tick when it straightens out.
• An edge bump when you drift against the road's edge.
• A positional ping for each roadside pickup within sensing range - the ping sits in the stereo field where the loot sits on the road. Steer into it, or don't; it's mostly baubles and the occasional relic.

If chasing pings is not your idea of a good time, the auto collect setting in mod settings picks up everything you pass regardless of your steering, and the pings stay quiet. This turns driving into what it arguably always was: a loading screen you can steer.

Cue volumes (and a master volume for the lot) live in the mod sounds tab, which also has a glossary that plays each cue by name.

The HUD

While driving, Tab cycles the mod's HUD panels - the party ribbon, the status readouts, and friends - and the arrows browse within one. The road area itself is pass-through: browsing never touches the wheel. Space grabs a ribbon hero to reorder the marching order. If you have a pet on the coach, it appears in the status panel as a button; pressing it pets them. The mod considers this essential functionality.

The game's road keys stay live throughout: G for the goals panel, R for relationships, C for the hero sheet, I for the bag, M or Tab for the map, and the mod's F, H, and B glances answer for the flame, the coach, and the wallet from anywhere. On a controller the game covers the same ground by default: D-pad up for the map, D-pad left for goals, D-pad down for the token glossary, D-pad right for the stagecoach sheet, Y for the bag, and Select for the hero sheet (the D-pad ones answer while your focus is on the road itself; in a HUD panel the D-pad browses the panel).

Forks

At a junction the game raises route banners over the road; the mod reads them as a transient popup inside the driving surface. Arrow keys move between the offered routes - each reads its destination and rewards, and a hero with a preference has their say on the route they favor. Confirm to commit. Since it is a popup and not a separate screen, you can still check the map or your bag while stopped at one, which the game itself always allowed and the mod used to prevent. We got better.

The Map

M (or Tab) opens the road map. The arrows browse it - regions, nodes, and connections - and the usual buffers carry the details of whatever the cursor is on. Two things to know: WASD keeps driving the coach while the map is open (the game is like that; park first if you value your wheels), and Ctrl belongs to buffer review there, so the game's hold-Ctrl token glossary is unavailable until you close the map.

Stories And Loot

Nodes fire their content as you drive through them - no node in the game actually requires stopping, whatever the tension implies. Road stories read the narration, then each choice on its own line with the hero it concerns, what they think of it ("Dismas: agrees"), and the outcome previews; S speaks that hero's vitals before you commit to ruining their day. Loot screens read one element per item with the full tooltip in the buffer.