I’m not a huge fan of racing games, but I do enjoy a good road tripping game. The Crew is one of my favorites due to being able to travel across the US. When I saw the Long Drive, I was in to it’s promise of being a game about driving through the desert. It was also a cheap buy, costing about $10.

This game is very much a meme game, but it doesn’t go so far to be a game that’s just taking the shit. It’s going for that “functionally bad” style you’d see in a Goat Simulator type game. I’d say it’s actually a little more functional than Goat Simulator. You can bring a blow-up doll to ride shotgun, when you zoom in your eyes bulge out like a Looney Tunes character, you can throw poop around. From the beginning, it’s very clear this game doesn’t take itself too seriously.

While the Long Drive basks in its lack of polish, there’s still a very understandable gameplay loop and challenge at its core. There’s a basic mechanic system to all the cars that encourages creativity, allowing you to mix and match frames, engines, wheels, etc. You have to manage your fuel & oil, along with your own survival needs like food and water. The only downside I found to this management system deals with the engines. While you could learn from hours of experimenting and reading the wiki, it would be nice to have some pop-up that let you know which engines take gas, which take diesel, and which take a gas/oil mix. There’s a limited inventory that encourages you to use your car’s space wisely to store the essentials you’ll need, along with any fun things you come across. Topping off your fuel or loading your trunk is all handled through physics-based interactions. Don’t forget to put your oil cap back on like me, because the moment you take a flip, it will all spill out.

The car physics handle well enough. The car weight, engine torque, and tires effect it’s handling. If you put a bus engine in an AMC Gremlin, you’ll roll down the road more than drive. They’re a little floaty on turns and hitting a bump in the road is a crap shoot. This is where that “functional bad” comes back in, sometimes a rock will just jostle your suspension a bit, other times it will send your car careening 20 ft. into the sky. Luckily the damage done is easily repaired, if you can find all the parts. I had a few times where the car would stop responding to my controls and at least once I got out of my car only for it to speed onwards into the desert.

You are tasked with driving down this stretch of highway after an apocalypse has set in. As such, buildings are few and far between, and humans are even rarer. The ones you come across are “zombies”. Playing in peaceful mode makes them just shamble around confusedly. This is a procedurally generated game, meaning every drive will be different. You may drive by lots of gas stations, you may only find the occasional warehouse. The only constant in each game is the house you start in. It will give you a basic smattering of food, water, and car care tools to get your drive started, the actual car you get however is random.

The art style, if you can call it that, is very basic. Everything is just a step above being plain untextured. There’s three different biomes, desert, grassland, and winter, but I only really saw the desert and grass biomes. All that amounts to is changing the color of the land from brown to green. The different models of cars is where most of the work went. They look good on both the inside and outside. There was some thought put into the overall world building though. The game has a decidedly 70s vibe to it with all the cars and old tech. You can listen to a lone DJ on the radio for some insight into this world as he reminisces about the old world and wonders about the new one. As the only voice in the game, I’m guessing our DJ is also the game developer, meaning this game comes from the Eastern Bloc. There’s random events sprinkled in like a UFO flying over at night or strange lights flashing in the distance. Those low-grade paranormal things really added to the silent, weird mystique of this game. There’s no real story ending I’m aware of, you just eventually run out of road.

All in all, the Long Drive has enough effort put into to function, but don’t expect many quality-of-life features. The loop of driving and scavenging, slowly building up your car to be more complete, or switching it out for a new one is what you have to engage on with this game, or else you’re best to skip it. The moments of silliness you make with this game help keep it fresh, along with a few moments of spookiness. You can tell they tried just enough to make this a functioning game and not just an interactive shitpost. Embrace the weird and dumb of this game and you’ll have a fun time.