Source: official over the hill website. Game imagery © Funselektor and Strelka Games.
How objectives connect to vehicle unlocks
The developer's official game page explicitly connects objective completion with unlocking additional vehicles, upgrades, customizations and cosmetics. The public Demo announcement gives a more specific example, describing challenging trails as part of the process of unlocking the three vehicles available in that build. These two sources establish the progression mechanism without requiring a guessed reward table, a hidden purchase requirement or a particular order for completing the entire map.
The same Demo checklist includes reward crates, scenic points and helping stranded off-roaders alongside difficult trails. Those activities make exploration more than a search for the next vehicle, because the game also offers equipment, cosmetic unlocks and things to photograph. The reliable distinction is between the overall objective system and an individual reward: the developer confirms the system, while the collected announcement does not assign every vehicle to a named launch challenge.
Why the Demo count is the reliable starting point
The developer's public Demo checklist supplies the clearest published vehicle quantity in the collected material: three vehicles were included in the preview. It also explains that exploration and difficult trails support unlocking them, making the count relevant to what players could actually drive. A larger set of garage entries, a creator's title or an image of an inaccessible selection screen does not provide the same evidence as the documented playable Demo scope.
The source review separates officially confirmed counts from community vehicle names and real-world resemblance comparisons. This article follows that distinction by using the published three-vehicle count without converting a player's identification into a licensed model name or an official launch entry. The result is a practical explanation of vehicle availability in the Demo, supported by the developer announcement and without padding the list with vehicles whose released availability was not established.
What the public Demo let players explore
The June public Demo covered Emerald Lake, described by the developer as the opening area of The Valhallas region. It included three vehicles to upgrade and customize, with the area accessible alone or with up to three friends in multiplayer. The official checklist invited players to explore for reward crates, visit scenic points, help stranded off-roaders and tackle challenging trails rather than follow a single fixed route through the landscape.
Players could photograph wildlife for the compendium, save their own photographs and collect Pebbles by recovering meteorites. The equipment examples in the announcement included winch anchors, repair kits, a camp and a meteorite radar, giving the Demo several activities beyond unlocking another vehicle. This content belongs to the documented June build, so it provides a concrete description of the playable preview without presenting that preview as the entire released game.
Pebbles, meteorites and upgrade progression
The public Demo announcement describes recovering meteorites and gathering Pebbles, the in-game currency used to unlock upgrades in that build. The developer AMA adds that points of interest provide Pebbles and that extracting meteorites supplies additional income for completing the available unlocks. This connects vehicle development with exploration, because finding activities and resources is part of improving the vehicles rather than a completely separate side objective.
The same developer answers describe meteorites as repeatable resources and explain that points of interest provide enough currency for upgrades across much of the vehicle selection. These are documented pre-release economy rules, not a final table of prices or percentage improvements for individual parts. What can be stated reliably is the resource loop: explore the area, collect the currency provided by its activities and use that currency within the Demo's upgrade system.
Functional parts and cosmetic customization
The official FAQ identifies upgrades for vehicle parts and tyres alongside cosmetic add-ons, while the store describes finding upgrades and equipment throughout the world. Merchants and cabins are the stated places to customize colours, accessories and cosmetics, connecting vehicle presentation with locations encountered during exploration. This separates the ability to change a vehicle's appearance from the broader collection of equipment and upgrades used to continue an off-road journey.
The distinction is useful when reading a screenshot or an accessory description, because a visible cosmetic item does not automatically prove a measurable performance increase. The collected official material confirms both kinds of customization without supplying a numerical effect for every available part. A source-based account can explain where these systems fit into progression while avoiding an invented upgrade tree, a promised handling improvement or an unsupported statement that every accessory changes the vehicle's capabilities.
What the developer said about installed upgrades
In the pre-release AMA, the developer explains that upgrades can be mounted and unmounted, and that players can also use vehicles without upgrades. That gives the documented system a distinction between owning a part and having that part installed on the vehicle at a particular moment. It also makes it possible to describe an upgraded vehicle separately from its unmodified form without assuming that every purchase permanently forces a particular setup.
The same answers say that upgrades could not then be sold or moved to another car. That restriction is part of the June-build description, so it should be read alongside the resource loop rather than as a promise about an unspecified future version. The useful information is the developer's stated behavior at that stage: removable installation was supported, while resale and transfer were not included in the system described in the AMA.
Individual checkpoints and progress between modes
The FAQ says progress is tracked individually, even when players help each other reach an objective. Each player must reach the checkpoint themselves to complete it, so another driver's success does not automatically complete that checkpoint for everyone in the session. This makes the distinction between cooperating on a difficult route and receiving personal objective credit especially useful when interpreting how group exploration works.
The developer also says that progress and completed objectives are saved and transferred between single-player and multiplayer. That means the announced progression system connects those two modes instead of describing completely separate solo and cooperative campaigns. This statement concerns a player's progression between modes, and it should not be expanded into a promise that a save transfers freely between Steam, PlayStation, Xbox and Nintendo accounts.
The full game and the separate Demo app
The full-game Steam listing uses app 2929250 and is the official destination for wishlisting and following the planned October 14, 2026 release. The historical public Demo uses a separate app, 4703940, which appears in the developer's Demo announcement and trailer link. These app identifiers refer to different listings, so the existence of the Demo page should not be confused with ownership or availability of the paid full game.
The official website points to the full-game listing, helping connect the store entry with the developer's own description of the project. The Demo announcement documents what the preview contained, while later announcements describe its closure and the full game's release plans. Keeping those destinations separate makes a Steam search useful: one page follows the full launch, and the other belongs to a specific preview whose public availability changed over time.