Keep Driving turns a long-distance road trip into a turn-based RPG

I love driving. I love the physical act: controlling this large, sophisticated machine as if it were an extension of me. But I also love the poetry and adventure of long-distance travel: the freedom, the self-sufficiency, the gradually changing landscape, the sense of limitless possibilities.

Video games are fantastic for capturing the first of these things, in Gran Turismo and many other racing games. Sometimes they try to do both at the same time. Open world driving games like Force Horizon offers a compressed and augmented dose of the pleasures of road travel, while the Truck Simulator series offers a more realistic, everyday version of it, and desert bus infamously parodied the boredom inherent in the idea of ​​simulating long journeys.

keep drivingan indie game in development from Sweden's YCJY Games (sea ​​salt, Post null), takes a different approach, aiming to capture both the romance and tedium of long drives, leaving out the part where you actually control the vehicle. Instead, it borrows from another genre of video games that is all about travel, adventure, and progress: old-school role-playing games that are about the hero's journey.

In the game's demo, which is available now, the goal is to drive through a fictional, unnamed country that vaguely resembles the America of a thousand road movies to your friend's house for a night playing video games. The trip will last four days in the game and between one and two hours in real life. After packing your trunk (a Resident Evil-style grid inventory), you choose your next stop on a map and hit the road. Then you sit back and watch your car eat up miles while the world shifts from right to left.

On each leg of the journey, events arise that threaten to impede your progress: a slow tractor, potholes or rain puddles, for example. These threaten to consume all three of your resources: gasoline, the durability of your car, and your energy as a driver. There's an abstract turn-based event system where you use abilities and glovebox items to eliminate threats (perhaps owing something to Oregon Trail) that appear at the bottom of the screen as a row of color-coded icons. Skills like “relax” and items like duct tape target particular patterns of icons, so there's a slight puzzle game element to these events.

Environmental conditions also affect these events, applying advantages and disadvantages. Rain increases gas drain, while a beautiful forest inspires you, removing the energy cost of some abilities. And you can also pick up hitchhikers, who come with additional abilities but bring their own idiosyncrasies: a wandering composer takes offense if you don't use his abilities; A cool young woman fills your trunk with useless junk. At rest stops, you can refuel, purchase items that replenish resources or counter disadvantages, or sacrifice time to take a job and earn some money for much-needed gas.

keep driving It is deeply nostalgic. It's set in the early 2000s, you're just out of your teens and you've bought your first car, maybe a beat-up 1970s muscle car or a boxy 1980s saloon that looks like a Volvo Series 200. The car has a CD player that plays indie rock from a garage band and you can fill the trunk with Coca-Cola bottles, guitars and cases of beer. The skills are represented by blurry Polaroids held up by bulldog clips. From time to time, moments of introspection will come over you while driving: My back hurts, I should call my parents, what am I doing with my life? The multiple choice answers to these questions apply status effects: some bad, some good.

It's a very specific and strong atmosphere that evokes that rootless time in life when driving for three days just to play video games with a friend seems not only feasible but also a good use of time. It reminds me of when, just after my 21st birthday, I went out in my little red Fiat to tour the houses of some distant friends during a misty, aimless summer. The pixel art cars, moody landscapes, and bohemian hitchhikers are well observed and channel the feel of a modern, late '90s coming-of-age film.

At the moment, the abstract mechanics of the game are a bit difficult to understand. Applying patience (a skill) and chewing gum (an item) to navigate a complicated road is a bigger mental leap than using spells and swords to defeat a monster, at least for me. But in a couple of hours, keep driving It perfectly evokes the precarious freedom of a long car trip when you have no money and all the time in the world. It's a game about drinking coffee to drive all night, sleeping in the back seat, and keeping yourself and your car together with pizza and duct tape. During the 15 to 20 hours that the developers promise for the finished article, keep driving could end the perfect video game road trip.