Keep Driving is a refreshing road trip management RPG

A road trip RPG that blends in some inventory management and unique turn-based battles that has you fight off everything on the road from tractors to abandoned suitcases, Keep Driving is a charming and clever game worth your time. Note: personal purchase.

Tested on Desktop Linux with the latest Proton 9.0-4 working perfectly.

Here you're trying to get across the country to join up with friends at a festival. It's a long way though, filled with dangerous roads and all sorts of strange people wanting to be picked up along the way. You'll be ensuring your car stays in top shape, along with sorting through your inventory often and attempting to keep up your own energy levels. It's a really unique blend of game features.

The developer said The Oregon Trail is one of the main inspirations for the game, and going into it knowing that should give you a reasonable idea of what type of gameplay to expect. It's like a modernised version of it with an early 2000's vibe. It's just captivating from the moment you set off and start to burn some rubber.

One of the really interesting ideas here is the battle system. It's not like you're getting out of your car and hitting people, instead it's about the encounters directly with everything being a possible danger, but also at times quite lucrative for loot. This could be overtaking another vehicle, getting lost, dealing with puddles of water, your car making weird noises, potholes and lots more random events.

The battles are turn-based and each turn has the possibility to reduce your car durability, your personal energy, your money and your gas. The attacks come as various icons that appear on the bar at the bottom of the screen, and you have various abilities to reduce how much damage each will take every turn. These abilities of yours need you to drag them over the bar to match up their icons as much as possible to remove the harmful effects.

Since it's a road trip game, there will be hitchhikers to pick up (or not). As you pick up more passengers they will all add to your abilities during these battle encounters. They will also add to the overall atmosphere of the game, sprinkling in some chatter along the way. Like my first passenger, who has a condition where they just fall asleep all the time, who kept asking me not to dump them in the rain as they didn't want to fall asleep in a puddle. Passengers gain experience and level up to become more important as the trip goes on too.

You also get to constantly upgrade your vehicle (and unlock more) as well. There's quite a lot of upgrades and customisation you can do here. Simple things like changing the colour but also proper upgrades like tyre types for different bonuses, engine upgrades, roof upgrades and more.

There is of course a lot that can go wrong during the game. Constantly trying to balance your different attributes is actually quite a bit more challenging than expected. You really do need to ensure you're always nicely stocked up, skipping even a single shop on your trip can end up quite fatal. Don't worry though, you can always call your parents to bail you out, but if they don't — game over.

You also have character status effects to deal with too, that you will want to get rid of as soon as possible as they will debuff you during your run. Things like being cold, that you could get rid of by drinking some hot coffee, will add to your durability damage during events. Or if you're starving, which will increase your energy costs.

Feature Highlight:

• A procedurally generated pixel art world to explore one road at a time.
• A nostalgic early 2000s setting with an emphasis on the analogue.
• Use turn-based ‘combat’ to solve situations (like getting stuck behind a tractor).
• Pick up misfits, oddballs and lost souls as you go.
• Featuring a killer soundtrack by local indie bands.
• Multiple endings to unlock when you return to the road.

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While it works great on Desktop Linux, it's not yet a perfect experience on Steam Deck due to some text being too small and no controller support (which they said they're working on). Feels like it should be a perfect fit for handhelds when they sort those two issues out.

Love it. Wonderful idea with some great music and the pixel art is terrific too. Absolutely worth grabbing.