HomeNewsKeep Driving

Image credit:YCJY Games

Image credit:YCJY Games

A colourful view of a car boot in roadtrip RPG Keep Driving, with the car on the right and a grid-based menu for its contents on the left

“Post Voidis a masterpiece of compulsive motion and hypnotic, irresistible sounds,“wrote Sinof YCJY Games’s “orgiastic” shooter. “It does something to my brain that I’ve never experienced before.” The developer’s just-announcedKeep Drivingseems a lot less inclined to scramble your grey matter, though it’s partial to the old rose-tinted goggles. It’s a droll, backward-glancing andslightlyominous 2D managementRPGin which you drive to a music festival on the other side of the country. Along the way, you will pick up hitchhikers, upgrade your car, fill your boot with random junk, and participate in turn-based, non-lethal “combat” with dawdling children and obstinate tractors. Here’s a trailer.

Keep Driving - Reveal TrailerWatch on YouTube

Keep Driving - Reveal Trailer

Cover image for YouTube video

The whole thing seems very spaced-out, for all the excess of menus, but there’s the suggestion that Life Lessons of some kind await. “Remember to take it easy,“the Steam pageremarks, in the manner of somebody smiling and noddling at a toddler to stop them looking at the mushroom cloud behind them. “You’re young. You have time.”

A procedurally generated pixel art world to explore one road at a time.

A nostalgic early 2000s setting with an emphasis on the analogue .

Use turn-based ‘combat’ to solve situations (like getting stuck behind a tractor).

Pick up misfits, oddballs and lost souls as you go.

Collect songs and listen to a mix CD of local Swedish indie bands.

Multiple endings to unlock when you return to the road.

I guess the natural foil for this isPacific Drive, which is similarly preoccupied with the art of car maintenance, but also 3D, post-apocalyptic and paranormal. If you enjoy swapping stories with strangers on the road, but think horseless carriages are for chumps, maybe cock a squint atWhere The Water Tastes Like Wine.