Review | Keep Driving | Take Things Slow, Let Out That Adventurous Spirit
Have you ever thought about hopping in a Pontiac Safari and going out on a soul-searching journey wherever the roads lead, eager to experience what the world has to offer and what you want to do with your life? This is the free-spirited energy that the youth today just can’t seem to acquire freely, focusing on the bills rather than deep thoughts, festivals, and aimless wandering.
Keep Driving is an RPG road trip that concentrates heavily on getting out to find yourself, with or without the help of others, struggling to make things work out. And if they don't, that's just one of the many outcomes you may encounter with packing up what little you have to your name and hitting that long stretch of country road. The game perfectly establishes a compelling message from the very beginning that sums it up nicely…
“Take it easy, you have time.”
Issues
Keep Driving can feel great until it isn't. It's a game that puts you behind the wheel of a vehicle and sends you out on the road to tackle situations like road rage, roadkill, flat tires, and more. These encounters are the main focal point of each road phase, slowly adding more threats over time depending on sleep deprivation, headaches, hunger, and so on. Although these threats cause more damage to the player, making survival persistently challenging, that initial challenge slowly becomes easy to resolve. Let’s suppose you acquire the crowbar or another utility like the knife, flashlight or a vehicle alteration. These objects effortlessly remove the elements that make encounters difficult because they can break through most threats immediately. If utility items were limited similarly to consumable items in the glove box compartment, it would have been a more balanced feature. Difficulty would have increased, making it important to do more with your supplies or to manage financial expenses, and maintaining status effects. As it stands, Keep Driving slowly becomes a game about driving with a few pit stops, which handle themselves all without player intervention, which doesn’t feel that engaging.
In contrast, "The Punk," a hitchhiker that the player can pick up, has a dog that he refuses to leave behind that is a part of his questline, which allows the player to clear out elements while exploring cities and their back alleys. The dog is something that is earned, not purchased, and feels rewarding once fully acquired, whereas there is no worry, reward, or concern about the permanent features of utility items outside of taking up inventory space, which becomes less of an issue if the pickup truck is chosen, since it is much more spacious with few other drawbacks.
Presentation And Gameplay
Without a variety of fitting tunes, it wouldn't truly be a road trip. Keep Driving has some of the best albums that fit that underlying wanderer vibe. Up for some uplifting music and vocals to bring up the mood? Coming right up! When in doubt, modify playback with subwoofers and switch on a metal band blasting while through towns and cities. It's your own adventure; experience it in ways that help you feel more comfortable.
One concern was the event overlay of current and future actions bleeding through with command lines overlaying the top left corner of the screen. Since it's happening on the top layer, this would cover up a lot of bonus effects, making it more challenging to focus on what had been obtained, be that some extra energy, gasoline, or durability of the vehicle, if the player isn't paying attention. Not to mention, it was a bit of an eyesore in contrast to the outstanding visual art direction, that while minor seemed to be an element that would resolve itself. Still, it’s wonderful to see hidden interactions with picking up hitchhikers who might offer some bonus passives or storyline that would provide new elements to work with, despite some being too powerful. It’s the many joys about it all; you would never know what you would encounter until it happened, which helps to fuel a curious mind and to motivate further desire to explore.
Keep Driving does an excellent job at displaying nature's beauty to inspire you to make many diversions across interstates, country roads, dirt roads, cities, towns, and many other locations waiting to be explored. Tired of the same highways and cities? Head through the countryside to view the clearer skies, unobstructed by towering buildings, or the nighttime scenery of now distant city lights.
The game isn't just about watching fields zip by; a lot of thought is put into how you tailor every adventure to your own preference and management. Pull over, arrange your inventory, refuel with a gas canister, drink some coffee, repair the vehicle, manage status effects, and plan out the next course of action. Maybe you're running out of money and need to find some work. Unfold the map, find out where you are and where you need to go, and draw out a course to push through the many encounters that frequently try to bring your journey to an end.
The design choice of pixel art style is very vivid and pleasant on the eyes, and you can’t help but appreciate such a well-formatted and compact UI that isn’t intrusive when needing to find something. At the bottom of the screen, you have the pedals, energy and resources, incoming encounters and events, the glovebox with all your consumables, and the vehicle itself. Every other element is directly in the centre of the screen, where you can store, manage, and reorganise your seats and materials to make room for everyone and every new element you add at the click of a button. You can also access submenus that will help you manage your vehicle as well as other gameplay elements that will help you hone your mastery of driving, socializing, and having a better chance at overcoming challenges when you level up and acquire new skills.
The game’s core concept is so immersive and impossible to pull yourself away from. Each time you find something new you want to explore, you become more responsible, self-sufficient, and rational with your choices, taking a few detours when needed to stay on top of fuel, food, sleep, and essentials. YCJY Games managed to perfect a challenging element, which was to emulate what it felt like to be a free spirit. It's an experience about taking it easy; nothing is meant to be rushed here, with the exception of select events that may have a countdown before your turn ends automatically, making things tense if you're unsure of what course of action to take.
Encounters can be handled in any number of ways, alone or with the assistance of hitchhikers, but making the wrong choices while picking them up may catch up with you later on. In the case pictured above, there was absolutely nothing I could do about the police. I had no resource cards available that were helpful in this scenario. And this was on top of the fact that this was the last stretch of the road before the next town, and I was in desperate need of gasoline. With so many status effects holding me back, hitting the accelerator and skipping a few encounters was the only choice I could make in a struggle to survive that then caught the attention of the police. Using the above example, you can see I am about to take a lot of damage from threats, indicated by the warning symbol above each icon. If I can't clear out any of them, I will take three hits to my energy, one hit to my durability and two strikes to my fuel gauge. I have four main concerns: I am hungry, tired, cold, and did not come prepared. This means not only will using a resource card cost double the energy, but I will also take double the damage mentioned prior. I certainly could have pulled out a few consumables that would have allowed me to lower the damage, but I would have still ended up taking too much damage, running out of gas, wrecking my vehicle, and going to jail for evading arrest, in which case it was game over. As you can see the game possesses a surprising amount of complexity, which could, and I hope will, get picked up by a modding community to offer a substantial number of possibilities.
Conclusion
If atmospheric vibes are what you're looking for, or a way to get out and explore without actually having to get up and take such a considerable risk, Keep Driving will offer this sensation for you. You can push your limits on how far you can travel and what new features you can unlock and encounter, while aiming for bigger and better goals that will help you make you feel a little bit more at peace with yourself.
It's difficult for people to leave everything behind or to sell off things they own for a chance to explore the world and, of course, themselves. If you feel like you're craving this but would much rather do it from the comfort and safety of your home, it’s the next best thing outside of watching your favourite vloggers live out the lives you wish you could be exploring yourself.
Take a deep breath, close your eyes, and reflect on your past and future. You have time to explore and to get what’s on your mind cleared out. It's incredibly relatable, like riding shotgun with a kindred spirit at the wheel. Keep Driving is more than a driving game; it challenges you to become accountable for your actions, making you think seriously about the consequences of your choices. It helps you do things you've wanted to, or maybe even experience things that you never knew you needed to see and hear, possibly because you don’t have a licence or cannot afford a car. You'll want to come back every so often for the music, the vibes, and just a way to calm yourself down or even to help lift your spirits when you need something to occupy your time.
