Keep Driving is an astonishing game, but it’s also a quietly moving, contemplative one. On its face, it’s a quaint indie that urges you to take your time, feel the fresh wind on your virtual skin, and kick back with your favorite tunes. It’s that, certainly, but it’s also much more. Keep Driving is one of the best games of the year so far, and well worth just about anyone’s time.
The game’s premise is simple: the player assumes the role of a young adult just starting to taste their first bit of freedom, setting out on an aimless road trip. Keep Driving offers some cursory customization options, including the sex of the protagonist and a starting bundle of supplies, but the majority of a given run will be determined by the choices you make on the road, not at the start of it. It’s a vaguely roguelike experience, although the length of each playthrough and fairly forgiving gameplay systems make Keep Driving more akin to a choice-based RPG with numerous different progression variables.
Keep Driving bares its thumping, wanderlust-soaked heart to its audience, and it’s an enrapturing sight. If you’ve ever gone on a road trip, bonded with a stranger far from home, or headed out on an ill-advised adventure with nothing but a pocket of loose bills and a cup of cold coffee, then Keep Driving is guaranteed to put a smile on your face. If you accept it for what it is, sinking into its mechanical and aesthetic mural, then that smile will prove remarkably hard to get rid of.
Keep Driving: A Long, Strange Trip
Rather than a main story, Keep Driving highlights a number of distinct narratives, some centering on your character, others centering on NPCs, and it’s up to you to choose which ones you want to pursue. Some quest chains will culminate in one of the game’s many endings, while others are far less final, serving more as narrative pitstops than firm conclusions.
This works to the game’s benefit, as its pixelated take on a summer road trip thrives on a sense of aimlessness and lackadaisical adventure. You’ll catch word about a rally race a few towns over, or hear about a sweet cabin rager to the north, and you’ll have to decide which event is worth your time. Oftentimes, you’ll be nudged along by your hitchhiker companions, Keep Driving‘s ingenious, charming spin on traditional RPG party members. Each of these companions has its own personality, perks, quirks, and goals, and you can either aid them in their journey, kick them out, or simply ignore them altogether, opting to take on the open road solo.
There’s nice attention to detail within this companion system, including unique dialog exchanges for specific situations, like driving while intoxicated and entering a city for the first time. This helps each NPC feel more alive and less like an interchangeable tool.
You Won’t Want To Leave Keep Driving’s World
Keep Driving‘s setting is nothing spectacular, but that’s precisely the point. The mundanity of its world is what makes it so appealing: you won’t be getting engaged with any worldwide crime syndicates, nor will you go off the beaten path in any vain, dangerous attempts at heroism. The adventure is intimate rather than grandiose; the escapist fantasy is one that you could attain in your own life. The magic of Keep Driving is that it makes scraping together five dollars for gas just as exciting as slaying a dragon or uncovering an ancient secret. It’s relatability and humanity that keep the experience exciting, not spectacle.
Keep Driving Is Lovely, but It’s Also a Hum-Dinger of a Game
Atmosphere and charm reign supreme in Keep Driving, but they never overshadow its identity as a game. Indeed, Keep Driving is incredibly fun in addition to being warm, hilarious, and endearing. Broadly speaking, its gameplay can be split into two pillars:
- Resource management
- Turn-based puzzle “battles”
The first of these pillars is about what you would expect from a management game, but it’s well-tuned and satisfying nonetheless. Players need to juggle resources including gas, money, and energy, all of which can be lost or replenished by resting in towns, or through other miscellaneous means. But it’s also important to keep track of other variables that are less explicitly identified as crucial, like cargo space and time, as these can wind up having a significant impact on how each short-term trip or quest plays out.
Woven into this resource management system are Keep Driving‘s turn-based “battles.” Rather than engaging in actual fights, players will encounter various road events and hazards, like roadkill or a tailgating car, which will present certain threats that can be countered by using skills or items. This is where party members (hitchhikers) come into play, as they all have unique skills that can be leveraged to either remove threats, buff the player, or provide some other advantage. Choosing the right skill or item for the situation is paramount for success, and the layer of strategy introduced by having to manually choose which threats to destroy adds a nice degree of real-time engagement to these encounters. In the long-term, players can unlock new skills or car upgrades to best handle specific threats and road types. In other words, Keep Driving greatly rewards thoughtful, strategic play.
The interplay between these road events, resource management, and progression isn’t avant-garde by any means, but it’s still surprising how engaging these systems are. Players will constantly find new overpowered strategies, only to have to swiftly recalibrate their approach as a result of a new road condition, status effect, or other unforeseen variable. Then, after finishing a first playthrough and gaining access to a new car, you can approach the gameplay loop from a whole new angle. Keep Driving could have gotten away with being a chill, vibes-based coming-of-age story with only serviceable gameplay, but the fact that it goes beyond that to be mechanically deep makes it all the more appealing, addictive, and respectable.
Keep Driving could perhaps be improved through a couple of quality-of-life enhancements, like the ability to zoom out on the map or a better way to manage quests, but these shortcomings pale in comparison to its overwhelming charm and effective small-scale storytelling. It’s a game worth recommending to anyone seeking a unique, satisfying, surprisingly replayable experience. It’s a truly special game.
Reviewed on PC
- Developer(s)
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YCJY Games
- Publisher(s)
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YCJY Games
- Incredible atmosphere & art design
- A great licensed soundtrack
- Surprisingly nuanced turn-based gameplay
- Emotionally evocative, minimalist storytelling
- Immense replay value
- Satisfying resource management systems
- Some quality-of-life shortcomings