You know how some people can’t picture an apple in their minds? I have a problem like that with cars in video games: Throw me in the classic position behind and slightly above a virtual vehicle, and I just lose all ability to conceptualize the entirety of a car and how it moves in space.
I smash into walls, I spin out on turns, I will never actually understand what drifting is and when I want to employ it–it’s a disaster. But still, I really like the idea of driving games, many of which involve exploring a landscape, one of my favorite things to do in games and real life. A bunch of driving games I’ve wishlisted came up as having demos during this year’s Steam Next Fest, and even as I wondered why I’d wishlisted so many driving games when I’m so shit at video game driving, I was excited to check them out.
Truck-Kun Is Supporting Me From Another World
I watched a lot of folks have fun with Truck-Kun Is Supporting Me From Another World at last week’s Tribeca Games Showcase, but I didn’t get a chance to try it myself until its Steam demo. You play as a truck driver who accidentally hits a young woman named Carissa, transporting you both to an isekai that honestly seems a lot like the regular world, except in this one you’re supposed to run down people, objects, and other cars. Doing this powers up Carissa in battles against monsters, as you try to help her get home before her big new job starts on Monday.
As you might guess from the trailer above, it’s a fast-paced, busy game. You have a time limit during each of your runs through its town, where you try to meet goals like running over a number of pedestrians, sideswiping cop cars, flying through the air, or running over specific objects. At the same time, you need to keep an eye on Carissa, shown in a pixel art bar at the bottom of your screen, and deploy her powered-up abilities to help her slash through foes. While this seems like a lot, and definitely felt like a lot as the tutorial explained it to me, in practice it all just means driving around like a lunatic and smashing buttons.
While I wasn’t totally in love with the game’s self-aware humor, I did enjoy playing a game that rewarded me for being a shitty driver instead of punishing me. It’s fun to just cause chaos; I never got tired of being encircled by armored cop cars, only to take them out with a dramatic side swipe. Truck-Kun is set to come out July 29.
Slow Roads
Slow Roads was originally a browser game, which you can still play. You just drive around a procedurally-generated landscape: the road twists and winds, you pass rivers and forests and hills, and that’s all you basically do… forever.
You can change the time of day and weather on the fly, and I liked how much this changed the mood of my drive. A sunny day made me want to go fast; dusk and dawn felt meditative; driving through the night or through stormy weather made me cautious. You can’t wreck your car or break anything–it’s just about exploring the road for as long as you feel like.
Since this is what I like about driving games anyway, I really enjoyed the demo. I also appreciated the game’s AI disclosure, which is educational while passionately disclosing no AI at all:
No AI has been used to generate any of the code or assets used in Slow Roads; this has been a purely human endeavour from the beginning of the project in 2021. Slow Roads is a solo-developed project, built with a decade of industry experience. Assets are created first-hand where possible, with most textures hand-drawn or composed from local photography. I believe AI should have no place in artistic exploits, and it will never be used for generating any elements of Slow Roads. Please note that procedural generation is not a form of generative AI; the procedures involved are carefully-designed mathematical functions used to generate the environments according to specific rules, with directed creative intent.
The Steam version will have more roads and locations, car customization, and the ability to add your own music to the game. There’s no release date yet.
Over The Hill
I think I wishlisted Over The Hill because it reminded me of a different in-development car game I like the look of, Garbage Country. Both have these tiny, boxy cars that look so fun to smash around a bumpy virtual world.
It is indeed super fun to bump around in Over The Hill’s wilderness, even if a lot of my time was spent flipping my car over by accident or failing to get the right traction on small inclines. Unlike Slow Roads, this isn’t a game that captures the joys of easy speed; most of my progress was painstaking, as I’d tilt over rocks or get beached on trees and have to use my car’s winch to haul myself out. At one point I stumbled upon a “challenge track,” a skinny, rough trail alongside a rushing river, and I honestly couldn’t believe it when I pulled the whole thing off, given how badly I’d done on its regular roads.
In addition to the winch that I used way too often, you also have different gearing to help you progress, and you can choose either manual or automatic transmission. (I have never once in my life chosen manual transmission in a game, for the reasons that start this blog.) As you travel, you find crates that give you car customization options, as well as cabins you can fast travel between or which repair your battered car. There are a lot of other tools and unlocks that didn’t seem available in the demo, and you can also play with up to three friends.
Despite seeming to be a game literally about having a hard time driving, a situation I face under the best of conditions, I really enjoyed Over The Hill. Your blocky car and the blocky landscape remind me of Lonely Mountains, and the whole thing feels like playing with a toy. It’s easy to get yourself out of a jam by just fast traveling back to a cabin, which inspired me to really give its tracks my all. I really liked its slow, effortful pace and am excited to spend more time with the demo. Over The Hill plans to come out this year.
