Keep Driving review

• Developer :YCJY Plot
• Publisher :YCJY Game
• Release :Feb 6th , 2025
• On :Windows
• From :Steam
• Price :£15/ $ 18/€18
• Reviewed on :Intel Core-i7-11700F , 16GB RAM , Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 , Windows 10

It ‘s not the destination , they order , it ‘s the pickled eggs we slurped along the way . In Keep Driving , a turn-based RPG of swishing scenery and smooshed roadkill , you live on a road trip in the early 2000s that will see you gulping coffee and stuffing cheap snacks into your mouth , all in an effort to get to the other side of the land in time for the big concert . It is a hypnotically necessitate game of picking up hitchhikers and combat tailgaters , a pixel art drivealong with tactile , chunky button and absolutely suited sound effects , as much fuelled by nostalgia as it be by gasoline . At first , I recall it live also slack and open-ended to elicit any deep feeling . But then I had to sell my guitar for half a tank of petrol , just to impose my dying grandmother . Dude , this cost a game that get places .

Before we have to poor granny , get ‘s take ancestry . It ‘s day one of your trip , and you create a simple character . Maybe you ‘re unemployed , or a part-time car mechanic . I chose to be a student ( more options unlock when you complete the plot ) . You also take some detail to make for with you . Possibly mum ‘s care packet , with its reasonable jerrycan of gas ? Nope . I took the suit of beer and my prized guitar . All this squeezes into the boxy inventory of your car ‘s boot . As for the car itself , you might care the tone of the characterful muscle car or hefty truck , but I become with the hideously ordinary 1981 Sedan . Unlike the early vehicle on offer , it can give four passenger . This , for me , would become massively crucial .

The actual driving is ( mostly ) done automatically . You assure the car where to go using a road map and handy signposts at each rest stop , small town , or city . In these nodes of commerce you ‘ll have to stock up on detail for the journey and slot them into the grid-based trunk . You can lower the middle ass to create still more storage space for beer , crisps , nuts , script , gas seat , spray paint , hot dogs , noodles , stove , car portion , excess tires … There ‘s a luck on offer and money is n’t ever forthcoming , so you ‘ll often have to create hard conclusion about what to buy and what to get out on the shelf . It ‘s like if the fella from Neo Scavenger owned a station wagon . Each point live useful in its own way . But you might not find how until you get into a scar on the road .

These cost called “ road result ” – basically turn-based fight against tractors , potholes , cyclist , or kids playing in the center of the god damn road . Each skirmish is declare with a stylish flourish of text scrolling past you care any other car that whooshes by on the motorway . “ ABANDONED CAR , ” it might say , before you border on a rusty old crash . Or “ ROAD KILL ” before bringing you to a halt in movement of an unidentifiable animal corpse . Velocity cameras , cops , tailgaters , even debate between your hitchhiking comrade specify as effect . Some of them made me laugh out loud . “ BEE IN THE CAR ” deadpans one pre-battle content . “ BIRDS THAT WO N’T MOVE , ” warn another as you approach a bunch of crows who resist to pass a way .

What open is a sort of card-based fight . Some polaroid snapshots hang up from your rearview mirror , each a draggable skill that will knock off an incoming attack . It ‘s a mere adequate game of match picture and avoiding position effects . Red gasoline attacks will frown your gas tank . Green social approach will lower your personal energy . Blue durability attacks will put a dent in your car ‘s physical health meter . You wo n’t always equal able to defend all attack at once , and have to minimize incoming damage accord to your needs . If you ‘re humble on fuel , for example , possibly it ‘s well to remove a hit to your chassis .

Those items from the store will serve . Use duct tape to avoid price to the car , smoke a cigarette to avert losing a pip of energy . You might also get status ailment as you move . I once drank a former dark bottle of wine at a repose stop only to awaken with a “ headache ” position . It intend any future attack would make dual damage . Normally , you await for this headache to pass . But I had been convey aspirin from the origin of the trip exactly for this second . I would n’t own drunk the stupid wine anyway , if it cost n’t for a peer pressuring friend – a hitchhiker nicknamed “ The Hurricane ” .

These hitchhikers slot into the car ass and put up extra skill to use in fight . They as well level up alongside you in matter to way . The Punk will fend off gasoline threats with aggressive abandon , and comes with a dog who takes up an extra space in the car . But at level three he abruptly becomes vegan , and you turn unable to buy meat or dairy merchandise from workshop . Another passenger , the Mechanic , will smoke any cigarettes you result in your glove box . My wine-sipping friend , the Hurricane , leaves litter in the car that require up space , stimulate you to clean it out at every stop . She ‘s awful .

These are thematic annoyances that hand the game its flavour . But there equal less intentional friction when it get to get by inventory . It ‘s fiddly to rotate items , for example , and I never compute out a way to well change objective between the torso and my decent roof rack ( a shopping trolley strapped to the top of the sedan ) .

Examining and swapping skills can as well equal a chore . The neat-looking polaroids equal arranged in a scrapbook , but you have to right click each one to remind yourself of its power . It looks great , but that way comes at the expense of being able to compare skills in a more readable mode . It ‘s clunky when compared with the card selection screens of any solid deckbuilder , where each card ‘s result live reach clear at a glance .

But neither this nor the occasional bug on the windshield defeat the strong atmosphere of the plot ‘s assumption . It ‘s an absorbing road trip not just in the pixel scenery that passes by ( fields of lavender , forests , good deal stove , distant lakes ) but as well in the random chit-chat your passenger do with one another . Their idle opinion on ledger , commentary on the state of your car , bite-sized anecdotes of their adventure on the road . There ‘s a loving amount of detail to this trip , right down to the music that you pick up and play along the means .

Your CD player can merely queue six song at a time , so you own to manually release and choose another circle of songs every time the music range out . This periodic force of the eject and shuffle buttons became , for me , a form of ritual . It lend absolutely nothing to your stats . It offers you no pre-battle benefit . And so far I feel oblige to prod my finger into this chonky pixel machinery every half a dozen songs . God . I remember I ‘m a small number in honey with this affair .

It ‘s unexpectedly heartfelt at times , also . My spread quest – to reach the Way Out music festival – eventually turn a secondary destination , supplanted by my punk friend ‘s desire to observe a rare society in the large city . The game ‘s open-ended rhythm reflect the forking paths of require that crop up in any road trip story . At one detail , I received a letter ( somehow ) from my grandmother . She compose that she equal dying . She wanted to see me one final time .

Okay , the quest was title “ Inheritance ” , so my money-starved pocket run the way . But when we arrive at granny , she blessed me not with cash , but with a patch of state . The trouble ? It was path back west . Just a few miles from the one horse town I started in . It ‘s mean that grandma perish shortly afterwards .

I ended up delay in that midwestern city far longer than anywhere else . I need temp chore after temp job at an employment agency , my negative debuffs stacking up . I cost tire ( energy saloon ca n’t be replenish ) . I was hungry ( energy price increase by 1 ) . I was dirty ( hitchhikers gain less XP ) . The game recognised what I was doing and labelled me with the trait “ workaholic ” poke fun with a description that reads : “ Are n’t you supposed to cost on a road trip ? ”

In another game , this might sense like manipulating the plot ‘s system . But hither the soulless gig saving stopover felt appropriate . If this live a road trip movie , I realize , this would be the clamber lowlight of the trip . Two of my three buddy have die their own way . My merely remaining car buddy live a dude who kept falling asleep in the passenger seat , and the hairy , silent dog . We live broke , knackered , abject on gas , and yet lower on feeling . I drove across the country for this ? I sell my guitar in a pawn shop in Bumfuck , Nowhere …. FOR THIS ?

Three days pass without us driving anywhere . Just : sleep , study , sleep , study , sleep , study . The plot ‘s calendar cover the days that hand with an nearly Persona-like attention , the quest to get to the music festival has a deadline circled in red ink three week from now . I make given up on that ambition . Not out of time constraints , but because I get become commit to roleplaying dejection and loss . Dude , my grandmother exactly die .

But her final wishes remain . She require me to die back home . To find that plot of nation and find what I can do with it . Hmmm . The calendar says I have two whole months to get there . I could bring my time . We could meet the country , run on boost trails ! I ‘m not exist colourful hither , the hikes cost little first-person dungeon-crawly walkabouts that bid bits of loot , sometimes get in country stopovers . The road trip equal not over yet .

I would after learn that accomplish granny ‘s death wishes is just one of nine possible ending for the plot ( a summary of your trip gets scribbled into a notebook alongside a photo of the old banger that bring you everywhere ) . And you can start the plot again with all your car ‘s upgrades installed ( shopping trolley roof include ) . But right today , in the city , I ‘m not even thinking of that . I merely want to equal back on the road .

I rev the engine . I pull a red lot around a city to the north that I know nothing about . I retune my skills then I do n’t involve to rely on the punk ‘s gas-guzzling breath to survive encounter anymore . Leaving the city , I get another content : wait , state a occupation firm , we can put up you a permanent position ! You were work so severe !

I mentally thrust the letter into my glove box with all the candy wrapper trash , where it belongs , and turn to my sleepy friend , out like a light . The dog behind me watch in the rearview . This city absorb . Time to go home .