My Summer Car
| My Summer Car | |
|---|---|
| Developer(s) | Amistech Games |
| Designer(s) | Johannes Rojola |
| Engine | Unity |
| Platform(s) | |
| Genre(s) | Racing, survival |
| Mode(s) | Single-player |
My Summer Car is a video game by Finnish developer Amistech. It was released on Steam as early access in 2016.
Gameplay and setting
My Summer Car is set in mid-90s rural Finland, where the player's objective is to assemble and upgrade a dilapidated car (modeled after a Datsun 100A) using various car parts found around the garage, as well as by mail ordering new parts. To earn money for the parts, the player can perform various countryside chores for neighbours such as delivering firewood on a flatbed truck or using a vacuum truck to empty their septic tanks.[1] The end goal of the game is to get the car to pass vehicle inspection.
Building the car is not obvious[2] as the player must literally build the car from the ground up: at the start of the game, the car is entirely disassembled down to the last screw, and the player must place each piece to its correct location, including screwing them in one-by-one with the correct size spanner.[1] While most parts only fit together correctly, it is entirely possible to assemble the car wrong, e.g. leave out an engine gasket, which will in turn break the car. The player also has access to various other vehicles, such as a minivan to carry car parts around and a tractor to tow other vehicles. Crashing the car will likely kill the player; the game optionally features permadeath.[1]
Meanwhile, the player must also cater to various survival game aspects as balancing hunger, thirst and fatigue, but also unusual ones such as urine and dirtiness. For nutrition, the player can buy food and beer in the store, fatigue can be restored by sleeping, the player can freely urinate anywhere, and dirtiness must be decreased in the traditional Finnish sauna. Drinking too much beer (or hard liquor) will eventually get the player drunk, which first causes the player to waver and their vision to distort, but eventually the player can pass out and wake up at a random place on the map the next day.
Much of the game's originality comes from its irreverent tone:[2] the game tacitly endorses drunk driving, there are three distinct buttons for cursing and flipping people off - none of which has any consequences other than the occasional response.[2] The game's dialogue is entirely in Finnish, with English subtitles. The player can also occasionally get a phonecall in the middle of the night from a drunk friend to pick them up from the bar.[1] The player must also save the game's progress on the toilet.[1]
Reception
Writing for Rock Paper Shotgun, Brendan Caldwell called the game "Funny, detailed and thoroughly confusing",[1] while writing for Kotaku, Nathan Grayson called the game "Janky and weird as fuck, but fun".[2] Both Caldwell and Eurogamer's Martin Robinson[3] compared the game's difficulty curve to Dark Souls.
References
- 1 2 3 4 5 6 Caldwell, Brendan (7 November 2016). "Premature Evaluation: My Summer Car".
- 1 2 3 4 Grayson, Nathan. "22 Life Lessons I Learned From A Permadeath Car Game".
- ↑ Robinson, Martin (27 October 2016). "My Summer Car is the most hardcore driving game yet".