History VisualNovel / HighwayBlossoms

** There is presumably a reason that eleven-year-old Tess is being raised by her sister, but it's never explained in-game.

* UnknownRival: In ''Next Exit'', Marina and Mariah are looking for a present for Tess's birthday. Both of them happened to target the same object: a fancy license plate, in an antique shop at the convention, and so they engaged in a vicious bidding war against each other for it, unaware about the other's identity. HilarityEnsues.

* CurseCutShort: Lil' Tess was almost close to delivering a PrecisionFStrike regarding the difficulty of her crew in getting into Double Arch, which is one of the rock formations at Arches National Park. What's more, the game immediately moves onto Mariah's next line the moment the first syllable escapes Tess's mouth, even if you aren't automatically advancing the text.

* SwitchingPOV: The main game is entirely from Amber's perspective, but ''Next Exit'' includes sections from Marina's POV.

* PracticallyDifferentGenerations: Tess is ten, while Mariah is of drinking age.

* TheAlcoholic: Mariah.
* AllTakeAndNoGive: Amber eventually realizes that she's a Giver and Marina's a Taker. [[spoiler:Amber looks after Marina and caters to her needs, but doesn't let herself rely on Marina or see her as an equal. Despite that, after they reconcile, Amber wonders if maybe ''Marina'' has been the one helping her this entire time.]]
* AllThereInTheManual: The characters' last names aren't mentioned in game, only in [[https://twitter.com/SyonSanteria/status/751207963918950401 a tweet from one of the developers]]. Averted in the end credits of the remastered version, as the main characters' full names are displayed alongside the characters' respective voice actors.

* BlueWithShock: Marina sometimes takes on this expression, most notably after [[spoiler:Amber infomrs her that she bought her a one-way bus ticket home]].

** Amber mentions that her mother had "issues," which apparently led to her losing custody of a baby Amber and Amber being raised by her grandfather. The last time Amber saw her mother was three years ago.

* PottyEmergency: After visiting the Grand Canyon, Marina suddenly has an urge to poop due to eating a gas station burrito beforehand. She begs Amber to stop at a nearby rest stop, and Amber eventually says yes after some persistent begging.[[note]]Gas station burritos earn a sorry reputation due to their usually sketchy quality that makes one go to the bathroom pronto.[[/note]]

** After unlocking the Goofball Mode by completing the game, one of the options is to play the game in "Extreme" difficulty, which involves an unskippable timer popping up that forces you to play the game in real time whenever the characters are driving a long distance (the girls' very first trip down the road to a gas station freezes the game for 30 minutes, and it just gets worse from there).

* TheStinger: A post-credits scene features the Trio [[spoiler:buying tickets from a scalper before going off on another treasure hunt.]]

* TheUnreveal: [[spoiler: It's never revealed what happened to the second box of treasure; if someone already found it or if it was even in the Mummy Cave to begin with. Likewise, it's never explained what gift Marina was trying to get Amber in Vegas before she got waylaid by Mariah and the rest of the Trio, as Marina still refuses to divulge that information afterwards.]] The latter is eventually revealed in ''Next Exit'', [[spoiler:Marina was trying to buy a pair of new mobile phones for herself and Amber. Because she wanted to buy them without bothering Amber for money, she treid to earn some for herself and eventually got waylaid by Mariah.]]

* CurseCutShort: Lil' Tess was almost close to delivering a PrecisionFStrike regarding the difficulty of her crew in getting into Double Arch, which is one of the rock formations at Arches National Park.

* PrecisionFStrike: Downplayed as it doesn't really work, but Marina of all people is the one to drop the F word during a argument later in the game.

* RaceForYourLove: The climax involves [[spoiler:Amber enlisting the help of the Trio to get back to Marina before she leaves for home on the bus ticket Amber gave her.]]

* TheCameo: Senri Kanzaki, a character from another Alienworks visual novel ''The Human Reignition Project'', briefly appears during the music festival, but only in Goofball Mode.

* EveryoneHasStandards: Joe and Tess both disapprove of Mariah [[spoiler:scamming Marina out of the gold in a game of poker]]. Joe tries to have the whole deal annulled, and Tess outright admits she'd help the girls cheat the double-or-nothing game if they asked.

* AdultFear: In Las Vegas, Marina excuses herself to go do something personal away from Amber for a few hours. Amber is understandably reluctant to let her go alone in a city like Vegas where anything could happen. She gets very anxious when Marina was late to return to the RV and becomes afraid for her well-being. The effect is strengthened by an earlier encounter with Jumbo, a very creepy trucker who tried to seduce Amber and Marina. [[spoiler: Fortunately, nothing bad happens to Marina except that she had a run-in with Mariah who coerced her into playing a poker match for the treasure, which Marina lost.]]

** The Treasure Hunt itself ended on this note. [[spoiler:After all the exciting race for the first three treasure pieces, Amber and Marina didn't celebrate finally finding the last piece of gold at the Valley of Fire for very long before they both moved on from the hunt quietly.]] Justified as up to that point in the story, the focus isn't about the treasure hunt anymore, but rather about Amber and Marina's budding romance and what they planned to do together after the hunt is over.

** Amber's mother abandoned her to be raised by her grandfather.

* ShoutOut:
** Goofball Mode's Extreme difficulty, where Amber and Marina's travels take place ''in real time'', is a reference to ''[[VideoGame/PennAndTellersSmokeAndMirrors Desert Bus]]''. There's even an achievement called "Desert RV" for completing the first drive.
** Also in Goofball Mode, after getting flagged down at the beginning, Amber tells Marina that isn't a good idea, [[Series/ItsAlwaysSunnyInPhiladelphia because of the implications.]]

* InterfaceSpoiler: Double subverted with the achievement, "Second Piece of Treasure." [[spoiler:While the description, "Didn't find the second piece of treasure," is kept secret until the player gets the achievement, the icon shows a dashed line outline of the gold with question marks, all but outright saying that Amber and Marina don't find it this time.]]

* NiceMeanAndInBetween: The Trio. Joe is a NiceGuy and the most personable of the three. Mariah is a JerkAss, albeit with a few PetTheDogMoments. Tess is emotionless and snarky, but a significantly better person than her sister.

* InterfaceSpoiler: Double subverted with the achievement, "Second Piece of Treasure." [[spoiler:While the description, "Didn't find the second piece of treasure," is kept secret, the icon shows a dashed line outline of the gold with question marks, all but outright saying that Amber and Marina don't find it this time.]]

** Marina consistently regards Mariah as her friend, and is never long phased by Amber's bad temper and emotional outbursts.

* InnocentlyInsensitive: A major plot point in ''Next Exit'' is how Amber always seem to treat Marina like a kid instead of a lover, often teasing her with puns or just going along with Marina's requests without really enjoying them herself, and complaining about what she doesn't like while not taking Marina's feelings into consideration. Things come to a head when the two are helping out Cassi at her booth in the convention and [[spoiler:Amber offhandedly offers to invite Cassi on a road trip with them, which causes Marina to break down because she wanted Amber to take her as seriously as she does with Cassi, too, and she finally gives a piece of her mind to Amber at the top of the Stratosphere, and Amber finally realizes just how insensitive she had been to Marina all this time and they finally made up.]]

** Mariah has some as well. Not only does she give Amber [[WisdomFromTheGutter some solid advice]], some of her dialog and alcohol issues imply she's hiding an InferioritySuperiorityComplex.

* TheUnreveal: [[spoiler: It's never revealed what happened to the second box of treasure; if someone already found it or if it was even in the Mummy Cave to begin with. Likewise, it's never explained what gift Marina was trying to get Amber in Vegas before she got waylaid by Mariah and the rest of the Trio, as Marina still refuses to divulge that information afterwards.]]

* DarkAndTroubledPast: Downplayed, but some bits of dialogue from Joseph implies that he, like Amber, has had to cope with losing a close family member.

* EmotionlessGirl: Eleven year old Tess never shows any emotion greater than mild interest, something that actually seems to worry [[ParentalSubstitute Joseph.]] This is actually deconstructed ''hard'' in the [=DLC=] ''Next Exit'', where being emotionless (or in her words, 'feel so little') alienates her from the other 'normal' kids and even the people she cares for, and she feels horrible because of it because she thought that she's 'being weird' and it'd drive those around her away.

* EmotionlessGirl: Eleven year old Tess never shows any emotion greater than mild interest, something that actually seems to worry [[ParentalSubstitute Joseph.]] This is actually deconstructed ''hard'' in the [=DLC=] ''Next Exit'', where being emotionless (or in her words, 'feel so little') alienates her from the other 'normal' kids and even the people she cares for, and she feels horrible because of it.

* EmotionlessGirl: Eleven year old Tess never shows any emotion greater than mild interest, something that actually seems to worry [[ParentalSubstitute Joseph.]]

A [=DLC=] called ''Highway Blossoms: Next Exit'' was announced with the planned release date sometime in 2020, which is a follow-up story taking place two months after the events of the main game as Amber and Marina returned to Las Vegas for an alien-themed convention and to see Tess for her birthday. They also end up reuniting with [[AscendedExtra Cassi, the candy shop girl]], who's determined to start following her own dreams.