Keep Driving is one of the weirdest games that we’ve played. Right now, we’re looking at a blank screen and we struggle with how to even begin explaining the game. You buy a car, grab a handful of resources and cash, and start driving across the country. Your final destination is a music festival, but it’s the journey to get there that’s important, along with everything that happens along the way. In this pixelated masterpiece, we choose our route, stop at places we find interesting, and pick up strangers. A point comes where we spend money we probably shouldn’t, maybe damage our car, or run out of things we need and wonder how we managed to get ourselves into such a mess. We feel weird just saying this, but Keep Driving is a road-trip RPG built around the well-known saying that it’s the journey and not the destination that matters. Join us after the trailer as we try to better explain what happens here.
There isn’t any traditional driving in Keep Driving. Well, at points you can drive a tad to the right and a bit to the left, but most of the time, we choose a road on the map and watch our little car make its way along while all kinds of problems appear in front of us. Potholes, traffic, tractors, animals, police, bad weather, and plenty of other hazards turn into turn-based encounters. While we’re engaged with the event, threats appear on the dashboard and our skills are used to deal with them. You’d think it’s a simple affair, but there is a surprising amount of thought involved once we start running low on resources and have to decide which abilities are worth using and which ones we should save for later.
Road Hazards Are Our Enemies
The road events are Keep Driving’s combat system, and they are tied so closely to everything else we’re doing. Our skills have limited uses, some can generate armor or restore resources, and certain combinations reward us for dealing with threats perfectly. We have to look at what’s coming. Then we have to work out what we can handle, trying at the same time not to waste something useful on a problem that could have been dealt with another way.
We are also constantly juggling fuel, money, energy, and the condition of the car. Sure, running out of gas is bad, but spending all our money fixing the car isn’t much better. We need somewhere to sleep so we can recover our skills, somewhere to refuel, and sometimes somewhere to make a bit of money before we can continue. We kept thinking that concert better be freaking worth it! At times, a longer route can be more useful than the shortest one if it gives us access to the things we need. We stare at the map, and it might look like we’re just choosing where to drive next, but driving there means surviving that part of the trip and dealing with all kinds of unexpected things that can really get you down.
Carrying Lives in the Car
The car is our everything. It’s our inventory, our storage space, and our little home for the entire journey. We fill the glovebox and trunk with food, fuel, tools, and all sorts of other things we find along the way. We take comfort in them until we have to start deciding what is actually worth carrying. Space is limited, so bringing more passengers can mean giving up valuable storage, while choosing a larger trunk can mean having fewer people traveling with us.
Speaking of which, we can pick people up along the road and take them with us, and each one comes with their own story, abilities, quirks, and problems. They can give us useful skills during road events, help with money or repairs, change how certain resources work, and sometimes introduce completely new ways of dealing with the road. It’s the coolest and most unexpected part of our journey! But, just like anything else, it comes with a cost.
Nobody comes without baggage. One passenger might be great for keeping the car running but constantly consume something we need. Another can make us richer while creating new problems. Someone else might be incredibly useful during encounters but cause trouble for the rest of the group. We only have so much space, so choosing who gets a seat becomes a proper party-building decision.
Their personal quests also give the trip some heart. We can pick somebody up because their abilities look useful and then, a few hours later, find ourselves emotionally invested and interested in what happens to them. Completing their stories gives us new upgrades, rewards, or even affects what becomes available on the map. It’s amazing how much of a good job Keep Driving does of making these temporary friendships matter.
A normal run can take a few hours, and when it ends, we’re encouraged to start another one. The map changes, the people we meet change, the skills we use change, and there are multiple endings to discover. We can even unlock new cars and starting options as we progress. Thanks to this, later trips aren’t necessarily about repeating the same journey, but enjoying the game’s failures in new, fun ways.
A Road Trip from the Early 2000s
The early-2000s setting fits everything beautifully. There are CDs, old cars, and physical maps. It reminded us of a time long gone, of that feeling of traveling somewhere without a phone. We can pick up music along the way and build our own little soundtrack for the journey, and the indie-heavy music fits the laid-back summer-road-trip atmosphere perfectly.
The pixel art is, again, done amazingly well. The cars, passengers, and locations have loads of personality without needing elaborate animations or enormous environments. There is a warmth to the presentation that makes the whole thing feel like one of those old memories where we remember the people we were with and the places we stopped, but can’t quite remember how we actually got there.
Keep Driving
Keep Driving takes all the ordinary little problems of a road trip and turns them into gameplay. Add some good music, a handful of strange people, and the occasional disastrous decision, and there is a lot to enjoy in this title that recently got released on PS5 too. We hope you decide to check it out and then not rush to the festival. There are plenty of things worth seeing on the way there.
Leave a comment