Forever Ago The Sam Detour Walkthrough (With Screenshots)

Story spoilers: this guide covers the full detour at Sam’s homestead, following the van breakdown at the end of the Highway Star Diner stop.

The Sam Detour is the fifth stretch of the main story route. Alfred’s van dies in the desert heat, the stranger’s dog leads a father and daughter to him, and Alfred wakes up somewhere very unfamiliar. What starts as an unwanted delay becomes the trip’s warmest stop — and the point where the stray dog effectively joins the road trip. All screenshots below come from published no-commentary footage of this stretch, credited in the source note, with every step deep-linked to the moment it shows.

Wake up in the teenager’s bedroom

After the phone-booth dream, Alfred comes to on a bed in a sun-yellow teenager’s room — band posters, a desk lamp, bookshelves. His first reactions set the tone: “What happened? Where am I? How long was I out?” A wall map and a doodled journal page later, one name sticks: Sam.

Alfred wakes in Sam’s room — band posters, homework, and total confusion.

Look around the house

The homestead is explorable while Sam is outside. The kitchen counter hides a made sandwich (“Not as good as Carl’s, but a close second”), the living room holds a large aquarium, and the desk is buried in take-home work — “someone’s been taking their work home.” Alfred also flips through his own journal here, and the page for the previous stop shows the flower he preserved, the circled jukebox task, and a wanted-poster doodle of the dog he met behind the diner.

The kitchen, the aquarium, and a lot of unfinished work tell Sam’s story before she says a word.

The journal review recaps the diner stop — flower preserved, jukebox circled, dog doodled.

Find Sam working on the van

Outside, the mystery resolves: Sam is under the van in the shed, sleeves up. Introductions are brief and characteristic — she already went through Alfred’s stuff (“You think I just bring some random stranger I found by the roadside into our home?”). When Alfred declares the trip cancelled and demands to fix the van himself, she hands him tools and watches it happen. At the workbench, the wrong socket (“You sure you don’t want the 10 mil for this?”) and a carpenter’s pride get him nowhere: “I’m just a carpenter, not a mechanic.”

Sam found the real problem long before Alfred picked up a wrench.

The diagnosis comes out matter-of-factly: dismantling the oil pan revealed splinters, but the leak traces to porous gaskets — and there are fresh ones in the shed. Her dad found Alfred, she notes, because the dog stood in the road barking until they followed it.

Water the garden — all of it

The van can wait for parts: Sam’s plant timer goes off first, and Alfred is drafted. She hands him a watering can and splits the garden — “I’ll take the left, you take the right” — with the faucet available for refills. Water every pot on your side; the can empties quickly in the heat. While you work, the conversation does the story’s heavy lifting: her father is a printer rep who is rarely home, her mother left, and the garden is entirely her own build.

The watering can empties fast — plan trips back to the faucet.

The Xbox list publishes the Green Thumb condition as “Beat Sam in watering her plants”, so finish your half before Sam finishes hers. Steam keeps the condition hidden; the achievement list has the full picture.

Gaskets from the shed, then the final bolts

With the plants happy, Sam retrieves the fresh gaskets and the van comes back together in a short scene. She leaves you the honors for the last step: “Just a few more bolts that need some tightening and this beauty should run like new.” Tighten them all, step back, and the van is roadworthy again — duct-taped RV in the yard notwithstanding.

The workbench says everything about who really fixes things around here.

Walk the field: fetch, the stick throw, and the selfie

Before departure, Sam takes “this good girl” for a walk and shows Alfred the field behind the house — the lone tree with a tire swing, the view she moved here for. The dog drops a stick at Alfred’s feet; throw it, and keep throwing when it comes back. Sam’s verdict: “You could have been an Olympic-level stick thrower in another life” — the moment tied to the Olympic-Level Stick Thrower achievement, whose published Xbox wording is “Start three rounds of fetch with Doggo”.

The stick throw doubles as the section’s achievement moment.

The walk ends on the rocks at sunset with the dog curled nearby, where Sam apologizes for calling Alfred a jerk and explains why she loves the quiet: “I like the tranquility, my plants, my shitty wooden shelves.”

The three of them watch the sun drop — the detour’s quiet peak.

Back at the journal, Sam spots the unfinished page and supplies the missing piece: “Ever heard of a selfie?” Frame the camera at arm’s length, get all three of you in shot, and the photo — Alfred, Sam, and the dog — completes the entry.

The selfie vignette adds all three faces to the journal page.

Camp, breakfast, and back on the road

The detour ends like a real visit: dinner leftovers for the dog, a campfire evening, and a shooting star that Alfred waves at (“Quick, make a wish”). In the morning, Sam hands over baked cookies for the road and the van — with the dog already aboard — points north toward the resort. If you are following the platinum route, note the pet interactions here; the full walkthrough covers what waits at Captain Marley’s resort, and the two earlier stops are documented in the Karl’s Pump ‘N’ Mart and Highway Star Diner guides.

By the campfire stop, the stowaway has a name in the making — and a seat in the van.

Sources and scope

Steps above paraphrase this section of the Into Indie Games main-story walkthrough and were checked against gameplay footage published by GenY_Gamer on YouTube (accessed 2026-10-10). All screenshots are frames from that no-commentary video, used with credit; dialogue quotes are the game’s own lines as shown in the footage. Green Thumb and Olympic-Level Stick Thrower are hidden on Steam; the conditions quoted above follow the Xbox list wording transcribed on this site’s achievement pages.