Keep Driving - The Coolest Management RPG on The Road (First Impressions)

THIS MUSIC, MAN.

Exploring The Games

Feb 10, 2025

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Keep Driving

Developer/publisher: YCJY Games

Price: $17.99

I was provided a key to create this content but all opinions are mine.

The summer sprawls out before you as you’re about to go on your first big road trip alone.

It’s the early 2000s, you’ve recently got your license.

You’re young, take it easy, you have time…

You make sure you have everything set and ready before you drive off to the festival. You pack stuff, making sure everything is done and settle in your 1981 Sedan, and then you’re off.

On your way to the festival, you give a ride to meaningful people. From an old hitchhiker to a lost man in search of his sister. You work random gigs and favors to earn money for food, fuel, and whatever else you need at the time.

When you’re not going through the stress of sleep depravity, cold nights sleeping in the car, potholes, rude drivers, and many other uncomfortable annoyances, you take in the time to think. Think about those back home, think about what you’re doing, think about life, as you Keep Driving.

Keep Driving by Y/CJ/Y Games, has an ordinary premise with a surprisingly engaging gameplay. They describe it as a management RPG and there’s really a ton to manage. From inventory space, the money you need to buy necessities, the fuel for your car, the energy to continue driving, your skills and their limited uses, and the condition of your car, there’s a lot to manage on your first road trip across the country, and a lot to learn from each run.

Rogue-lite by principal, Keep Driving begins each run with typing your name out, picking how stable your relationship is with your parents (which matters because they will save you if in a pinch), your occupation (which will start you with a specific trait with its own bonus), what you’re bringing with you (Mom’s care package has a Jerrycan, how thoughtful), and lastly, what vehicle you’ll be driving.

This is when you’re first introduced to the inventory system of this game and the interface. Whichever starting equipment you decide, you need to fit it in your car’s trunk or glovebox, and with the starting vehicle being a sedan, you have the option to lower the seats to get more space. On the bottom of the screen, everything from your energy and fuel level to status effect and route progression are all showcased neatly in an interface that reflects your car.

It helps a lot with the emersion that if you want to avoid an encounter, you have to floor your gas, you can pause by hitting your brakes, and you can use items during an encounter by reaching into your glovebox. Everything in this game feels like it was made to simulate something boring in a fun and immersive way.

Who Are You Driving? Where Are You Driving?

What I’ve enjoyed the most (fault me for being an English major) is the stories that unravel throughout your journey. I won’t go too deep into how stories unravel but Y/CJ/Y Games did a great job with the storytelling, developing the surface level of the characters enough to feel for them, and giving each hitchhiker a reasonable purpose as to why they ended up in your vehicle.

While your initial task is to join your friends on the other side of the country to party it up in a festival, along the way you get the option to pick up hitchhikers. They’re more than just another tool to be used to overcome threats because they also have their story to tell.

They do have their initial favor they ask when they join you, such as bringing them to certain locations, but during the journey, they strike conversations not only with you, but with whoever else is in the car, revealing their personality or worries; Whether it’s through the skills, conversations they have with you, or during the end task, you may not see them the same way you saw them when they joined you. One hitchhiker that stuck to me was The Idiot, and in his description, which you get for all the hitchers, say,

“The way he just stood there and stared out into the horizon made me a bit worried for him. I wasn’t sure he was all there. He said he picked some flowers for his sister and was waiting to be driven to her.”

He seems lost, talks oddly, and his skills are named things like OCD, Oblivious, What? and Hmm… Each conversation with him was odd, mournful even, and reaching the end of his mission gave context on why he expressed himself in such a way, and why his head was always in the clouds. And I’m not sure when or how, but his description changed to a more positive one. Though, it could’ve changed at any other time, this is just when I noticed it.

I’m so glad the hitchhikers served more than just tools for combat but also to show different walks and phases of life, goals, and problems. An old man who doesn’t care about riches anymore, a young woman who seems to be escaping something, or youthful rebels. It’s a great way to make an ordinary premise feel grounded and emotional, which also leads me to say that there are other events that will occur during your runs, as there are nine endings. That’s all I’ll say about that. Just know that reality strikes in more ways than one.

I believe these types of stories would be called contemporary fiction in the literary world, and I don’t see how it wouldn’t apply to games such as this. Keep Driving allows the player to enjoy its clear depiction of the mundane perils of road trips in a touching way.

The Mundane Perils of Road Trips

You don’t start with enough fuel, cash, and energy to get to the other side of the country, especially with all the varied encounters you’ll go through, side missions, and end missions. A quick look at the map shows you that you’re going to need more cash and more fuel. Combat, traveling, and managing go hand in hand here.

While it’s odd to say there’s combat in a game like Keep Driving, in which I’ve yet to see some real violence, it’s just not what you’d expect. You’re not getting jumped, there are no zombies, no tactical confrontations, but a slow tractor in the way, potholes, a tree blocking the road, rude tailgaters, arguments, or scary biker gangs driving around you.

Each combat encounter will have a random number of threats which correspond to your essential resources: Energy, Cash, Durability, and Gas.

These threats can have different effects above them, such as attack (deals 1 damage), debuff (gives a random negative status), danger (deals 2 damage), shield (they’ll tank one hit), and note (destroys adjacent threats when destroyed).

Your skills, which will be hanging from clips on the bottom of your rearview mirror, will use an amount of your resources and get rid of the threats when placed above the matching icons. When perfectly placing the skills on threats on the first use, you get an extra turn, though this only happens once.

Because you lose valuable resources every time you get hit and every time you use a skill, you need to be weary of the routes, and your needs. Each of the four road types you take has their own attributes:

Motorways encounters will mostly affect your gas and energy and will have negative effects as well.

Rough routes will mostly have durability affecting encounters, and some threats will be shielded.

Country is more chill, which is why it will be taxing to your energy.

And City will have more cash and energy threats in the encounters, and there’s chances of getting danger threats.

Not only do you have to plan your routes according to your resources, but also you have to keep in mind the skills at your disposal, items, and time, because the missions at hand do have a time limit.

Luckily for you, cash and fuel are fairly easy to get if you explore the woods (which is like a first-person dungeon crawling perspective but you expend energy), and as you learn the mechanics you’re able to hear really dope indie Swedish music that I now need more of in my life. Just listen to these songs:

You’ll unlock and buy more songs as you play the game. So far, they’ve all been great.

I Have To Keep Driving

I know I’ve yet to experience the game as a whole. I’m a sucker for contemporary fiction, and Keep Driving so far is scratching that itch. The way Y/CJ/Y has made the ordinary and mundane into a challenging management RPG, while also having stories that make it feel grounded and pull at my heart strings makes the journey not only intense, but heartwarming.

While the game has had some bugs during my gameplay, it’s nothing to deter me from continuing my journey. The learning curve isn’t steep, which is good as this game doesn’t explain too much, just what’s needed to know.

Now if you don’t mind me, I’m off to listen to Indie Swedish music and figure out how I’m going to get some gas money and much needed rest.

Let me know what you think about the game!