Keep Driving Review
Keep Driving is an atmospheric roguelike about life on the open road.
Keep Driving. Credit: Y/CJ/Y
As good as a game can be, very few truly evoke a sense of a particular place and time. Even rarer are those that successfully reflect a place in life, in this case, the freedom of being carefree and young. Keep Driving from Y/CJ/Y is one of those games.
You receive a letter from a friend inviting you to join them at a music festival that’s a month away. It’s summer, and you have nothing to do, so you head off on a road trip. You’ll go where the road takes you and have adventures along the way. It’s the early 2000s, so you don’t have a cell phone; all you’ve got is your 1981 Volvo, some cash, a care package from your mom, and some CDs.
Keep Driving. Credit: Y/CJ/Y
The game exudes a sense of freedom. You’ll get quests from hitchhikers you pick up and other sources, but you don’t actually need to do any of them. Maybe you won’t even go to the music festival and find a different ending to the game. You can head down any road on your map and listen to music on the open road, then explore where you end up.
Keep Driving. Credit: Y/CJ/Y
Of course, driving isn’t trouble-free. You’ll encounter all kinds of problems, usually mundane: cows on the road, rough terrain, traffic cams, arguments between your hitchhikers, and many more. When you run into one of these, the game triggers a turn-based battle where you must defend against losing energy, cash, fuel, or car durability. You use your abilities—unlocked with skill points—and those of your hitchers, as well as items you keep in your glove compartment, to deal with the hazards that show up on your car’s dash. The whole thing is very inventive.
When you reach a rest stop or a town, you can fill up on gas, visit shops for food and other things, upgrade or repair your car, and more. Sometimes, you’ll find an opportunity to explore a trail or back alley and enter a first-person perspective turn-based dungeon crawler mode. You can scavenge for supplies or things to sell, but you might need tools like a flashlight or a rope to reach certain areas. Despite the mundanity of all these things you can see or explore, there’s always a sense of adventure and discovery.
The game’s graphics are lively pixel art, all seen from a 2D side-scrolling perspective, with the exception of the first-person exploration segments, which resemble early 3D games like Wolfenstein 3D. Some UI elements are small; status effect icons can be hard to decipher, but mousing over any of them will tell you what they are. As counterintuitive as it sounds, having it all be pixel art gives the whole presentation an analogue feel; it complements the notebook and paper map UIs, etc. Perhaps it’s because the style so effectively creates nostalgia.
Keep Driving. Credit: Y/CJ/Y
One of my favorite things the game does visually is how it presents its encounter titles. When you’re driving and approaching a turn-based battle, its name whooshes by in giant capital letters. It’s stylish presentation that helps to sell your speed and one of the many things that make the experience of the game’s life on the road feel so good. It fits perfectly with the weather effects and parallax scrolling backgrounds, making the game feel alive as the hitchers chatter in the back seat.
Keep Driving wouldn’t be quite the same without its spectacular soundtrack featuring music from local Swedish indie bands. Along the journey, you find CDs in shops and other places; you keep these between runs to grow the music library you’ll hear. Using your car’s CD player, you make a playlist of songs—or just hit shuffle—and the music plays until the list is done. Having to do this is very tactile and added a lot to my experience. The music would stop, and after a little while, when I would notice, I would have to open up the CD player UI and hit eject to make a new list or play to listen to it again.
Keep Driving. Credit: Y/CJ/Y
There’s a lot to love about Keep Driving. Even though it clearly draws inspiration from other games, such as Oregon Trail and FTL, I don’t think I’ve played a game quite like this. It feels handcrafted and seems like it’s very personal to its creators. I loved it and have been thinking about it non-stop. I’m going to keep playing Keep Driving.
Keep Driving is available now for PC on Steam.
Overall Score: 9/10
Played on: Steam Deck
