I’ve always been the type of person who loves a good family vacation, out in the wilderness and exploring the world with loved ones is an excellent way to bond, and RV There Yet? is a virtual version of that experience, right?

Well, yes, but also no. 

When my daughter saw me playing with my fiancé on release day, I knew she would want to play with us, because she would use any excuse to get some gaming time in. So, despite knowing that it would likely end in tears, I formatted my old laptop, set up a secondary Steam account that she could use to play with us, and we dove in. 

Things started out well enough

If you’ve read my previous article on RV There Yet?, you’ll know what we signed up for when we agreed to go on a virtual camping trip with a stubborn and infuriatingly determined five-year-old, but honestly, thing’s started out pretty well, at least until we got into the RV and set off on our true adventure. 

When you start a game of RV There Yet?, you’re all dropped outside the RV in a lovely campsite that, honestly, I wouldn’t mind staying at myself. There’s a tent, some cooking gear, and some deckchairs overlooking a scenic lake. Shortstack had a great time running off into the wilds of the forest while my fiancé and I set up the RV with everything we’d need, and we even took it in turns to fling each other into the lake using the Flip-o-matic as a makeshift springboard. We found some hats, shuffling them between us to make sure we all got each of them, and then we got into the van. 

And that’s when things went downhill, both literally and metaphorically and literally. Why? Because Shortstack insisted on driving.

Don’t let the child drive the RV

For most people, that would seem like a fairly common-sense thing to just know, and I am one of those ‘most people’. I argued against the idea of letting the five-year-old drive the RV, truly I did, but any parent will tell you that kids are singularly capable of giving you ‘the look’ and you can no longer deny them a single thing. The puppy dog eyes worked their magic, and I reluctantly taught her how to manage the manual transmission, then we set off. 

It took about three seconds for us to crash into a tree and lose a significant amount of the RV’s outer shell. She laughed the entire time that I was repairing it. 

Still, she refused to give up the driver’s seat, and we set off again, a little more successfully this time. We got just past the first rockslide, she parked up in the middle of nowhere, left the RV without warning, promptly wandered off into the woods, got lost, and we had to reset back to the beginning because she got stuck in the river. All in all, not a bad first attempt. 

Beware the wildlife

Skip forward a little bit, and we’ve managed to progress a decent chunk (with my fiancé at the steering wheel this time). Things are going well, Shortstack has comandeered the toilet as her chosen seat whenever the bus is in movement (something that I regularly checked up on by glancing at her screen), and everything is good.

Until I turn around in my seat and see that Shortstack is no longer in the toilet. She’s outside the RV, and there’s a bear headed in her general direction while she screams at me to “DO SOMETHING MUMMY!”

As a mother, I can safely say that my protective instinct has never needed to kick in quite as rapidly as it did in that moment. I leapt from my seat, grabbed the bear spray that we had luckily just picked up, and ran from the van to protect my child from a virtual and very angry bear. My fiancé wasn’t far behind, rushing forward to pick her character up and literally throw her back onto the RV. 

Thanks to our coordinated and instinctive rescue efforts, she survived the encounter with the bear, but her health was low. Turns out that chicken nuggets are a good medicine for both virtual bear attacks and virtual illnesses. 

We are never going camping

At least, not until she’s older and less likely to get distracted by something in the woods and wandering off to investigate without telling anyone where she’s going. I’m not physically or mentally prepared to fight a bear away from my child in real life, and honestly, there are just too many bugs. 

Still, she’s intent on playing again tonight as soon as she gets home from school, so I’m expecting more screaming, more panic from me, and more laughter from her while I panic. Maybe the next adventure will be better than the last, and we’ll have a lovely visit to Mabutts Valley together as a family. 

I mean, I doubt it will end in anything other than pure chaos, but isn’t that at least 90% of the fun?