Keeping Driving is not just the name of indie devs YCJY (car)RPG, pixel, management driving adventure, but its whole philosophy. Keep driving through the rain, the damage to your car and other things that could just get in the way of your main goal.

This goal just happens to be to get to a music festival on the other side of town. You’re young and you’ve just purchased your first set of wheels, which Keep Driving will let you pick before you set out. Each of these cars comes with a set of bonuses and a ‘pack’ of items that will help you along your travels for you to include in the boot of your car. Your boot is set up in a ‘grid’ format that is reminiscent of Tetris, symbolising the precision that is needed when packing a boot, or any area where space is limited,  just right. Throughout your trip, as you pick up items or hitchhikers, you will have to make sure that there is enough room for them and that you haven’t overloaded your car with items.

The pixelated style of Keep Driving and its earthy colour palette inspired by movies such as 1984’s Paris, Texas and classic games like Oregon Trail II, really captures the mood of being young and on the road in the early 2000s.

The game gives you two views of your car – either a side-on view when you are driving, or a top-down view when you are inspecting your trunk or the inside of your car. Before you set off, you’ll need to open your map and select which town you will stop off at next. Each new stop will tell you how much gas you will use and what the town contains, such as grocery stores, mechanics, or gas stations. The first few times I drove between towns I became a little bored, as your Keep Driving sets up your car so that it drives automatically and you only need to interfere if a battle occurs.

I’m not the kind of person who takes things slow; I get impatient with slow drivers and love an EDM beat. However, Keep Driving made me slow down and I felt good for it. In watching my car drive off to its next location, I began to notice the changing landscape that unfolded. Mountains, trees, buildings, all in their pixelated earthy glory, making me remember the beauty in being mindful.

When you’re driving between these towns, combat occurs. These combat events come in the form of obstacles in your way, such as potholes, speed cameras or tailgaters. Each of these events will damage certain elements of your car/self, such as money, your personal energy, your car’s durability, cash and gas. For example, the speed camera will only attack your cash, whereas the tailgater will attack your energy, your car durability and your gas. These ‘attacks’ come as turn-based actions that will show you what elements of your car/self it will deplete and it is up to you to use your ‘skills’ in the ways of cards, to defeat these attacks. These cards must match the symbol that your attacker is trying to eliminate for the attack to be cancelled out.

To help with these battles, you can pick up hitchhikers along your travels that will come with their own special attacks that mirror their personalities. For example, I picked up a hitchhiker dubbed ‘the suit’ who was pretty much a failed businessman in a dirty suit and a depleted attitude. His abilities include “escape the event without taking any damage” and more low-end attacks, whereas the musician who looks super cool and is bubbling with artistic inspiration, will change threats into musical notes. Combat is the one aspect of Keep Driving I have some issues with as I feel that ‘cards’ don’t give adequate information about their buffs. This meant that combat for me was a bit of a trial and error as I had to work out which cards had the biggest impact on my attacker with little knowledge of their value.

It was also hard to gain these cards. You earn XP, which goes towards unlocking new cards, and you can pick up certain items from grocery stores that will help with your attacks. However, with all this in my arsenal, I still struggled to compete in battles due to the vagueness of the card’s descriptions. The hitchhiker abilities also fall in the ‘too vague’ category. But, these hitchhikers also come with debuffs, so you have to be super careful who you decide to let inside your car. The ‘suit’ for example wasn’t the best person for me to have onboard due to his ‘uncool’ vibe leading the other hitchhikers on board to gain less XP after an attack. Even the musician will need you to fit his guitar in your boot, taking up nearly half of your storage space.

Keep Driving does a great job at making these hitchhikers interesting even though they are also high on the ‘odd’ meter. There is also an effort to show how your driver builds relationships with these characters with little snippets of conversations coming up as text on the screen. Or, if you want to follow the relationship your driver has with the hitchhikers throughout your journey, you can click on the car boot to read updates on personal information that your driver has attained throughout the trip. Driving for long periods can be such an isolating experience, but with the inclusion of these hitchhikers comes an element of human connection. Keep Driving gives backstories to these characters that are sad yet touching, which breaks up the monotony of monitoring yourself and your car.

Don’t think that Keep Driving is a point A to B game, however. There are events and life-changing moments that will throw you off from your original path. I was challenged with this; do I stick with the original plan and drive straight to the music festival? Or do I explore what the rest of the map has to offer? I’m young, so do I want responsibility or freedom? Keep Driving made me question not only what my character may want with their future, but also, whether that was possible based on my resources and time I had. It combines a lovely head vs. heart dilemma, something that young people often struggle with balancing.

Your choices matter in Keep Driving and therefore, the game has multiple endings. When you finish a playthrough, which takes about four hours, you will return to the beginning and the game will show you the other paths not taken. This shows the replayability of Keep Driving, as I know that through my playthroughs I didn’t even get through half of the game’s map, meaning that there is a lot more to see and do and experience.

This sentiment of exploration and youth is matched with the soundtrack of the game. YCYJ has an assortment of CDs that you can collect by talking to people when you make your rest stops in the towns along the way. These are albums from local Swedish indie bands and the way Keep Driving arranges for the player to listen to them is a total flashback to the early 2000s. The game lets you ‘add’ songs to a blank CD as if you are ‘burning’ it and making yourself a compilation. It’s all these little touches that make Keep Driving such a gorgeous indie title to chill out with.