This pixel art road trip RPG's reveal trailer is the only thing that's ever made me nostalgic for my crappy first car

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Keep Driving won't have to tell me twice.

Facing a speed camera challenge event in Keep Driving.
(Image credit: YCJY Games)

Earlier this week, Swedish indie developer YCJY Games revealed Keep Driving, its upcoming driving game that imagines a cross-country festival roadtrip in your first car as a side-scrolling management RPG. And it looks gorgeous. 

YCJY has gone heavy on pixel art in past games like Post Void and Sea Salt, but Keep Driving looks like its aesthetic magnum opus. From the customizable retro beaters you'll drive and customize to the early 2000s era backdrops of backroad gas stations and rainy Swedish farmland, Keep Driving is peak pixel art nostalgia. It's almost enough to make me long for my own first car, with all its sudden battery deaths and brake failures. Almost.

While crossing Keep Driving's procedurally-generated roads, you'll be facing its version of turn-based "combat," using the driver skills you've unlocked and whatever snacks, tools, and trinkets you've crammed in your glove compartment to evade speed cameras or navigate sheep flock blockades.

In addition to collecting car cosmetics like decals and dashboard bobbleheads, you'll meet the occasional "misfits, oddballs, and lost souls" hitchhiking along the way. Perhaps you'll serve as a convenient carriage for a runaway bride, or temporary transit for a salaryman who just walked out on his job. Considering you'll have to manage your gas, car condition, and your own energy levels, let's hope their destinations are convenient.

Even Keep Driving's UI has an excellent vibe. Every menu and meter looks like it has a secondhand, analogue, '80s hand-me-down dinginess to it that matches your decades out-of-date ride. If I can imagine how a UI's plastic would feel if I brushed my finger against it, that's a good sign.

Keep Driving doesn't have a release date yet, but it's available for wishlisting on Steam now.

Lincoln Carpenter
Lincoln Carpenter
News Writer

Lincoln has been writing about games for 12 years—unless you include the essays about procedural storytelling in Dwarf Fortress he convinced his college professors to accept. Leveraging the brainworms from a youth spent in World of Warcraft to write for sites like Waypoint, Polygon, and Fanbyte, Lincoln spent three years freelancing for PC Gamer before joining on as a full-time News Writer in 2024, bringing an expertise in Caves of Qud bird diplomacy, getting sons killed in Crusader Kings, and hitting dinosaurs with hammers in Monster Hunter.