Keep Driving: what's a roguelike if not a junky old car with a decent FM radio?Cardigan, but thanks for asking!Image credit: YCJY Games Feature by Christian Donlan Contributing Editor Published on Feb. 7, 2025 When I was younger, platformers were the dominant genre, so whenever an idea came along that needed turning into a game, platformers were co-opted to help. Nowadays it's often roguelikes. And sometimes it really fits. Taking a long, wayward journey in a junky car? Turns out that really is a roguelike.Keep DrivingDeveloper: YCJY GamesPublisher: YCJY GamesPlatform: Played on PCAvailability: Out now on PC (Steam) This is the idea behind Keep Driving, a game my brain keeps calling Free Driving, probably because of the sense of unbounded potential it allows for. In Keep Driving you fill your crappy car up with stuff you'll need for the next few days and then head out on the road, picking up hitchhikers - or ignoring them - and engaging in battles with very ordinary road-based problems, like being stuck behind a lorry or dealing with a bad road surface. Because it's a roguelike you have to manage a handful of resources, including fuel and the general state of your car. You need to keep your energy up and you need to keep moving. It's all seen from the side-on perspective and it really feels like you're hitting the open road.Battles play upon those resources, by the way. Whatever you're faced with, they will project little lines of resource points onto the screen and you need to use your own abilities (which hang from the rear-view mirror like air fresheners) to match those specific points and cancel them out. Leave the points in play too long and you take damage to that resource (I think). Cancel them out and the challenge is over, and you're off to the next bit of business.Here's the trailer for Keep Driving.Watch on YouTubeI'm still early on, but I already love the game's ability to conjure memorable journeys. My parents met when my dad was hitchhiking, so I always feel duty bound to pick up everyone I see by the road in-game. First time out, it was a woman in a wedding dress who had a useful skill I could use in battle. Second time out, it was someone who the game openly told me was a bit of a useless idiot. I plonked them in the back seat.Yes! You can choose where people sit, just as you can rearrange what's in the trunk or the wheel well using a form of inventory Tetris. You can put helpful snacks in the glove compartment - chocolate that gives you a burst of stats when you're getting low, say, or duct tape which helps out the car in some way. You can upgrade everything at garages, fill up at petrol stations, and buy stuff you might need at roadside convenience stores.This is all lovely, and at times the game feels like a playable version of that Jack Reacher book where he hitches a lift with the wrong crew and spends a lot of time planning his escape at drive-thru McDonalds branches. But what I really love is the way this game feels like it's rocketed straight out of someone's memory of a gloriously wasted summer when they found themselves with an unreliable old Volvo and nowhere in particular they needed to be. A summer when their best friend was the FM radio and some weirdo they picked up by the side of the road. Sounds great, to be honest.