Keep Driving
Modifiers for each turn of a road event keep you on your toes: in foggy weather, some symbols will be obscured, while scarier incidents will increase the number you need to match.
Developer/publisher YCJY Games
Format PC
Release Out now
Summer’s here. School’s out. You’re in the prime of your life. Outside your parents’ house is a vintage sedan; in your hand an envelope containing a ticket to a music festival on the other side of the country. With admirable economy, Swedish studio YCJY sets the scene for a classic road trip. Yet if OutRun 2 represents the romantic ideal (blue skies and landmarks whizzing dreamily by as you belt along with the top down), Keep Driving strives to deglamorise the experience, sometimes capturing the fantasy but more often presenting the quotidian reality of your maiden voyage of self-discovery. So, yes, you’ll grin broadly as dawn breaks and you find yourself hurtling past stretches of parallax-scrolling orange groves, a mixtape of revivalist shoegaze and post-punk blasting from your speakers. But just as often you’ll find yourself navigating potholes, flat tyres and traffic jams on rugged country roads, straining to coax your vehicle to the next town before it runs out of juice – or you do.