Played on PC
The beginning of the 2000s, summer, great weather. The protagonist of Keep Driving goes on a road trip for the first time in his life – friends invite him (or her) to a music festival on the other side of the country. At his disposal is an old sedan from 1981; a wreck, but it is enough to drive far from home and look for adventures, which, however, most often find the protagonist themselves. You insert a CD into the player, open the map and, accompanied by the wonderful music of a rock band that you heard for the first time, you drive wherever your eyes look.
⇡#Anything can happen
In Keep Driving we don’t fight evil, save the world or fight with opponents. This is a road movie in a game format, in which our main enemies are potholes in the asphalt, cyclists climbing under the wheels and flocks of sheep running out onto the road. The character still wants to rest on the road, and not get stressed because of fallen trees and cops stopping the car for no reason. But all these obstacles can be overcome, especially when you upgrade your car and pick up fellow travelers on the road – it’s more fun together, although you can drive past them if you feel more comfortable alone.
Sheep not only spoil the mood, but can also damage the car, judging by the icons at the bottom of the screen
It all sounds a bit strange, but that’s how it should be – Keep Driving surprises with unusual ideas all the time, and you don’t even know where to start describing it. The character and the car in this game are one whole, and they both have several characteristics: the driver’s energy, the amount of fuel in the car’s tank, and the car’s safety. The character also has money, which will come in handy more than once. The amount of all of the above decreases over time: the energy and gasoline reserves are reduced during trips, and money is spent in stores. But all of this can also be affected by random events, which you can’t avoid on the way from one settlement to another.
For example, you encounter a tractor on the road – big, noisy, and there is no way to get around it. This is one of the road events, and at the beginning of it, threat icons appear at the bottom of the screen. They are harmless in themselves, but if there is an exclamation mark above one of them, this means that after your turn the “enemy” will cause you damage. And it will depend on which icons the game has chosen as attackers – that is, either your car will be damaged, or your gas tank will be slightly empty. Usually, not all icons immediately become dangerous, but in some events (for example, when meeting a cop) they can all be activated from the first second.
Stars on the cards destroy any threats
To avoid “injuries”, you need to use your arsenal. Firstly, consumables in the glove compartment that erase certain icons – you drag them from the glove compartment to the bottom of the screen, put them on certain symbols and the latter disappear. Secondly, cards are attached to the rearview mirror, which also erase icons in different ways. Some can be used many times until the character runs out of energy, and some become unusable after several uses – to restore strength and update the counter, you need to sleep either in the car or in a motel.
Here Keep Driving suddenly turns into a mix of a card game and a puzzle. Cards do not clear any icons – if there is an energy symbol, a space and a money symbol on the card, you will not be able to remove the gas tank icon with it. And this space can get in the way – there will always be situations when it will not be possible to clear the line because of it. And it is advisable to use “helpers” as effectively as possible – if you do not miss with a card or an object and perfectly erase the corresponding cells, the character can make another move. Accordingly, the chances of overcoming trouble on the road on the first try increase. Nothing prevents you from pressing the gas pedal and getting away from the obstacle, but in this case, all the icons will work and cause damage, so there is no point in this – you meet each obstacle with a fight.
Sometimes the character starts to philosophize – at these moments you can get temporary “passives”
⇡#More mechanics needed
The entire game is built on these card “fights”, and they are varied enough not to get boring too quickly – even the animals you meet on the road are different, and you have to deal with sheep and crows in your own way. Some of the problems the character encounters seem far-fetched, but in general, the gameplay mechanics in Keep Driving are so unusual that you quickly stop paying attention to them. Instead, you explore the subtleties that are not explained in the tutorial – for example, the character’s temporary passive bonuses. If he has not slept for a long time, a penalty is imposed on the maximum energy reserve. If the “fight” was very successful, the hero’s mood will rise and in the next “fight” the cards that usually cost energy will become free.
You can influence boosts and penalties, including with the help of consumables, which are freely sold in every store. The character is hungry – you buy a chocolate bar or a banana. He felt cold after a night spent in a car instead of a motel – you drink fresh coffee. And if you want to take it with you, it is better to buy a thermos at the same time, otherwise the drink will cool down. No less important are car upgrades, which are available in almost every shop, but can only be installed in workshops. With them, even more bonuses appear: with a fashionable steering wheel, the character will almost never feel stress, with a good carburetor, one of the threats in each event is immediately destroyed, the grill increases the endurance of the car. Not to mention the many types of tires, which also somehow affect threats or improve performance. And a high-quality suspension doubles the effect of tires, which encourages you to approach their choice wisely.
There are a lot of parts in the stores, so it is sometimes difficult to choose – all are useful
All this requires money, and at first there will be problems with it – the only source of income will be selling all sorts of junk, which eventually fills the trunk. But then in populated areas you start to come across ads. A group of guys got stuck in the middle of the road and decided to take a break – you need to grab two cases of beer (which take up a lot of space in the car) and bring it to them. Someone suddenly wanted pizza, and regular delivery does not work. Musicians went to give a concert and somehow forgot their instruments. Or a film director is looking for someone in a black car to shoot a couple of scenes – buying black paint in a workshop will more than pay off with potential fees.
Our ultimate goal is to get to the concert venue in four weeks, and there’s no need to rush anywhere – there’s plenty of time to do along the way. Visit the race track, where we’re invited on the condition that we install the necessary parts on the car. Go to the hospital to see a dying grandmother. Get a part-time job. Some events will have to be skipped due to time constraints – the aforementioned beer delivery quests, for example, require the player to hurry. And if you fail a couple of such assignments, you’ll get the “Unreliable” characteristic – and this is another gameplay layer that you didn’t know about for several hours. You get bonuses for various actions in the game, and it’s not written anywhere what exactly they’re given for – you just stumble upon them suddenly.
Quests that require quick turn-in are usually completed in nearby locations.
A game about travel couldn’t do without fellow travelers, and from time to time there is an opportunity to put someone in your car. Temporary friends here are very different – from a drunk girl, because of whom all sorts of trash like broken bottles accumulates in your car, to a lost girl, who gets out of the car every minute on her own business. In addition to the fact that some of these people are associated with quests, all these fellow travelers have their own cards, available while they are sitting in the car. And the longer you travel with them, the more abilities they open up, and they are very useful – the hero himself has only five cards, and even taking into account the four things in the glove compartment, this is not enough, especially since you can’t open the trunk in the middle of a “battle” and find something you need there.
At the same time, the character does not play the entire game with the same cards – as you progress, new branches of pumping are opened for him, and for completing quests and other actions you are given experience points, which you unlock new skills. There are a lot of interesting things – for example, there are cards that give armor when erasing icons, which absorbs damage from attacking symbols. And there is a card that destroys as many icons as there are passengers in the car. But the coolest thing is that when you play again, all this pumping will be saved, and you can start a new journey with a much larger arsenal than the first time. And you will want to return to the game – and try out a new car, and visit new regions, and slightly change the character’s backstory. For example, before leaving, you decide what kind of relationship you have with your parents – this can determine the fate of the hero in a difficult moment.
Day turns into night, and in the dark there is a higher probability of getting negative effects such as stress
***
Keep Driving combines a huge number of mechanics – it is a turn-based strategy, a card game, a survival simulator, and in some sense even an RPG with companions, whose “spells” you use from time to time. And I haven’t even mentioned the episodes in which you actually get out of the car – there are few of them, but they are here too. What is surprising is that the game seems simple from the outside, and during the gameplay there is no feeling that you are being overwhelmed with a bunch of characteristics, numbers, cards and words – but at the same time inside it is a very large-scale, complex and exciting adventure in which everything is brilliantly combined. There are problems like an inconvenient map that is difficult to read and impossible to zoom out, but these are minor things – for everything else, Keep Driving makes you want to constantly recommend it to everyone until they finally try it. Once again you are convinced that without independent developers, the gaming industry would be very boring.
Advantages:
- A great atmosphere of a long trip, promising to visit different cities and meet new people;
- An original combat system reminiscent of unusual card battles;
- Survival simulator elements are not annoying, even if you are not a fan of the genre;
- A lot of game mechanics that you don’t immediately learn about;
- A gorgeous “road” soundtrack.
Disadvantages:
- The world map is difficult to use.
Graphic arts
Yes, pixel art again. Yes, gameplay is more important. It looks nice, you can distinguish inscriptions and objects – this is enough to get carried away by the gameplay after a couple of minutes and not think about the graphics.
Sound
Even if you prefer electronic music to rock, it’s hard not to fall in love with the music of Westkust and other bands featured here – they fit the atmosphere so well. You’ll even want to buy speakers for your car to expand your playlist (yes, you can do that here too).
Single player game
It’s hard to call the game a story-driven one – rather, it’s a journey that will be different for everyone. And if you want to repeat it, then partial progress transfer will allow you to start again with something that’s not empty-handed.
Estimated time of completion
It all depends on how quickly you want to get to the festival, so it will take from 5 to 20 hours to complete – stretch the process yourself if you want to. And you will.
Collective game
Not foreseen.
General impression
The game masterfully combines several different genres without seeming overloaded or, on the contrary, underdeveloped. One of the most interesting releases of the busy February was a project whose release date we learned only a few weeks ago.
Rating: 9.5 / 10
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