My Summer Car is (at the expense of making player experience into a joke) one of the jankiest and most unpleasant games I've played in recent memory. Past the jokes about vulgar Finnish lifestyle and janky frustrations there's extremely little to enjoy about this title.

The player is a teenager in the summer countryside of Finland in 1995. While abandoned by his parents who are on holiday, he attempts to assemble, restore, and upgrade a very janky vehicle.

The game is a mix of car assembly simulation, survival management, and a variety of other driving bits, odd jobs, and activities. From the get-go the game is extremely aggressive with its systems and has no interest in showing or helping the player figure anything out. While this could be chalked up to "realism" the player is only able to rotate an object in a single axis and reloading a game threatens to bug items out of your vehicle. There are a variety of ways to experience the area but the player must directly find parts (no way to figure out what to get or how without a guide) in town, manage thirst/hunger/stress/filth/urine/fatigue as it rapidly dwindles, and put together the car and bolt it perfectly, lest the engine fails or some other catastrophic issue affects the player.

The player must perform various side tasks (never told where tasks are or where to go, so one needs a guide to figure that out) and utilize borrowed vehicles like tractors and vans to grab materials before the car is put together. If the car is properly put together the car must be tuned, fluids topped, inspection passed, and then optionally put in various activities such as rallies and impressing girls. If the player can get that far - the physics are so incredibly unstable and frustrating that even a special trick with slipping beer cases under a car to attach an engine are impossible. Death is also fairly common, jail is present with ruthless cops and rude drivers, pausing is nonexistent, and saving is sparse.

Music is extremely sparse without the radio, but the player can be treated to a blend of Finnish rock and electro to help add to the atmosphere. The game faithfully recreates a Finnish countryside where apart from janky cars and generally ugly looking (and acting) characters the sounds of serene (and repetitive) nature are all around. For those who manage to (cheat) or put up with the game long enough there are a variety of different little bits and pieces hidden in the world (card games? Video poker? Ghosts??) that give it a fair bit of flavor.

Alas, a flavorful (yet ugly) world isn't enough to make up for the fact that nothing in this game is fun, and the act of merciless survival systems and non-functioning physics simply make this experience a joke on the player or generally things that the player has to put up with. It's boring, it's frustrating, and to love it is a great act of masochism.