Keep Driving is an atmospheric management RPG set in the early 2000s where you go on a road trip to remember. Read our review to see what it did well, what it didn't do well, and if it's worth buying.
Keep Driving Review Overview
What is Keep Driving?
Keep Driving is an indie atmospheric management RPG from Sweden-based indie game studio YCJY Games that is set in the early 2000s where you, the protagonist, just bought their very first car. It’s the start of summer vacation, and your friend invites you to a rad music festival all the way on the other side of the country. Wanting to try out those new wheels, you pack up and start a long and fulfilling journey full of unexpected twists and turns. Manage your supplies, meet a colorful cast of hitchhikers that make your otherwise lonely trip more exciting, calm your road rage—your journey, your way. With nine different endings to uncover and tons of side quests and side paths to discover in a procedurally generated world, you’ll be in for a ride.
Keep Driving features:
⚫︎ Nostalgic Pixel Art and Interface
⚫︎ Turn-Based Combat—Road Trip Style
⚫︎ Procedurally Generated Maps
⚫︎ Tons Of Side Content
⚫︎ Multiple Endings
⚫︎ Different Types Of Hitchhikers To Meet
| Digital Storefronts | |
|---|---|
 Steam |
|
| $17.99 | |
Keep Driving Pros & Cons
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
 Familiar RPG Gameplay With A Twist Replayability With Multiple Endings Fine Attention to Detail Awesome Soundtrack |
Slight Visual Glitches Characters Can Be Flat Could Use Some Tweaks |
Keep Driving Overall Score - 74/100
Keep Driving is a modern but nostalgia-inducing take on a management adventure-RPG set in the small but warm confines of your car, cruising through the country. It splendidly blends together familiar RPG elements of turn-based combat and inventory or resource management and puts it all in a unique, choose-your-own-adventure type road trip experience. Its stunning pixel art is pleasing to the eyes, with its attention to detail, fitting color scheme, and an intuitive UI. While it has its shortcomings in terms of visual glitches and characters that may feel flat at times, it’s still a charming little game that delivers one heck of a wonderful journey on the road.
Keep Driving Story - 6/10
The overall plot is rather simple, with one clear goal—get to the festival in time, get from Point A to Point B. But what makes the plot and the trip more substantial is the interactions you have with all the other characters you meet on your journey, whether they be a random NPC in the towns or the hitchhiker sitting beside you in the car. Depending on who you meet, you can even decide to alter the course of your journey entirely, making for a whole new storyline. It’s up to you—your world, your summer, your way. On another note, while the hitchhiker characters have slightly more depth since you as the protagonist are with them for most of the playthrough, they still feel rather flat at some points with repetitive dialogue and this becomes evident especially after several runs.
Keep Driving Gameplay - 8/10
Keep Driving’s engaging gameplay loop is based on several systems already featured in other RPGs, although with a unique modern twist. There is inventory and resource management, turn-based combat in the form of road events, equipment customization, skill trees for better abilities, exploration, quests, and even a sprinkling of random events that could make or break that certain leg of the trip. All these mechanics are familiar to adventure-RPG veterans, but they’re not difficult to understand for newbies. The game is ready with easy-to-follow tutorials to explain these concepts, and while there is a challenge in strategically winning the road combat encounters, there’s no sudden difficulty spike that will throw players off.
Keep Driving Visuals - 8/10
The game’s charm lies in its gorgeous pixel art, with its lovely muted colors and attention to detail despite being rather blocky. There is a wide variety of backgrounds you can view as you cruise through the roads, from the bright sunflower fields of the picturesque countryside to the large-scale factories that pop up as you approach the urban landscape. Its intuitive UI is a nice addition as well, modeled after a real car dashboard with some tweaks, making you feel as if you’re really the person behind the wheel. The attention to detail in both the characters’ features and the items and tools are astounding, bringing more life to the overall experience. However, the screen sometimes feels like it drops in frames enough to be noticeable or there are incidents of screen tearing, which can be jarring for some players.
Keep Driving Audio - 8/10
Keep Driving’s catchy soundtrack is outstanding, with different Swedish indie artists’ songs across a range of genres being featured. From adrenaline-pumping rock to more chill acoustics, there’s something in it for everyone. Sound effects are well-incorporated into the game as well, from the roaring of the engine as your car drives along the road, to the simple ding of the cash register when stocking up supplies—it’s as if you really are part of the road trip, elevating the overall ambiance.
Keep Driving Value for Money - 7/10
For $17.99, it may seem pretty steep. However, considering its replayability and multiple endings, players can easily squeeze in over 20+ hours with at least four hours per playthrough trying to complete everything and meet everyone possible—if they have the patience and the motivation to do so.
Keep Driving Review: A Modern Day Oregon Trail
Keep Driving brings in the best of resource management mechanics and RPGs, mixed into one lovely little package in the form of a road trip. As an RPG fan, I was very interested in how an RPG could be played in that way, and the prospect of a road trip sounded amazing. I also had a run with the original The Oregon Trail, which was fun and fulfilling despite its difficulty (for me, at least.) I unfortunately do not drive or own a license, nor have I been on a real genuine road trip before (sad, I know), so Keep Driving stood out to me with its concept that I’ve only ever read about in young adult novels from my childhood. And boy, I was not disappointed.
Unique, Accessible Gameplay That Runs Smooth
First on the list is its accessible, easy to learn gameplay. The gameplay loop runs on familiar RPG mechanics, such as turn-based gameplay, inventory and resource management, equipment customization, a rough party system, skill trees, and even random time events (called Introspection in-game) that can either reward you or screw you over out of the blue. While the systems are familiar, they’re presented in a rather unique way. The turn-based combat, for example, is in the form of something called road events which are hazards and strange incidents that could send a normal driver road-raging, like an insect swarm or a giant cow blocking the way (no, you can’t run over the cow!) You and your hitchhiker buddies have skills that can clear up these road events, or you can make use of special items like bubble gum and cigarettes instead to save on your precious resources.
Now, I’m not the best at planning out good strategies and I am pretty guilty of lashing out skills and attacks in rapid-fire succession if my plans don’t work. However, Keep Driving makes it easy and almost cozy-like, with minimal frustration and difficulty in clearing these combat stages. There’s still a strategic element to it somehow, and you get better results if you plan well—but it’s not brutally punishing if you don’t execute it perfectly. Its handy-dandy tutorial explains the mechanics in detail, and with a few stops in, players would have already grasped its core gameplay. And even if you do get a game over, there’s always a chance for redemption, either walking to the nearest town for some gas, or calling your parents to rescue you from your predicament.
Astonishing Attention To Detail
I loved how much they paid attention to the minute of details, making the game feel more realistic by a tad. For example, food items or glovebox items with multiple uses will visually wear down as you use them as well, like the more you use the roll of tissue paper to keep yourself clean, it will lose more and more tissue until it becomes just a cardboard roll. When you put items on the roof of your car, the rack will fill up as well. Eating an apple will show the bite mark, then using a bag of chips will mark it open. It’s such a small detail, but it’s much appreciated to see that every little thing you do comes up visually.
Even your main interface is a car dashboard, with intuitive buttons that go exactly where they need to go. Your glovebox with your combat items is literally a glovebox with a cover that you can open and close, which is a cute little detail—it’s a joy to play with while there’s nothing going on screen yet. The music player too, which recreates the 2000s car CD player complete with a black and green colored interface, adds to the early 21st century vibe as well.
This realism extends to the hitchhikers as well, with their own quirks that fit perfectly together with what they are. For instance, The Kid hitchhiker is equipped with pretty useful skills in a pinch, but of course, as a kid, she constantly needs to go on toilet breaks even in the middle of the road—which counts as a "combat" road event. Annoying as it is (in terms of gameplay), it adds a hint of realness to The Kid’s character.
Catchy Tunes To Jam With
Keep Driving’s soundtrack features several talented Swedish indie artists, whose genres range from head-banging metal rock to soulful acoustics coupled with an emotional voice. While you start off with only one CD from a band called Westkust, you’re able to acquire more CDs through purchasing from a store or from certain NPCs that give it as a reward for a quest or just because they wanted to spread that band’s music.
As your collection grows, you can mix and match the songs you like into one playlist (yes, also in CD form) that plays throughout your journey. There’s even a handy dandy Shuffle button if you’re not familiar with the songs, which is a great way to introduce these great pieces of music to a wider audience. I, for sure, have Westkust and The Honeydrips tracks in my playlist now.
Full Of Content And Replayability With Multiple Endings
While a playthrough can easily be done in four hours or more depending on how you go about your roadtrip, there are nine different endings to achieve. The world is procedurally generated every time you start up a new run, and routes you used to take in your last playthrough will definitely be different the second or third time around—this factor of randomness keeps things pretty engaging, making sure that your playthroughs won’t be exactly the same as the other. You even unlock more cars as you replay, which does give a different experience. For instance, the pickup truck you get on your second run has a lot more inventory space, but only two extra seats for hitchhikers.
Moreover, there’s quite a lot of content to cover, some even taking you completely away from your original goal of meeting your friend at the music festival on the other side of the country. The unpredictability in this choose-your-own-adventure type of game is intriguing, and will surely keep you wanting to explore every single nook and cranny. There’s quite a lot of country towns and urban cities on the map, just waiting for you to arrive and get a look-see. Your run has many different possibilities and outcomes—you’re free to play and live it just the way you want it to.
Visual Tearing
Strangely enough, for a pixel-type game, I’ve encountered some visual bugs in my playthrough, particularly with obvious screen tearing and frame drops. While it wasn’t a common incident for the rest of my run, it still caught me off guard. Players may also find this jarring in a modern pixel style art game, but it’s an issue that can easily be fixed with an update patch.
Characters Could Use A Little More Fleshing Out
Despite all that, the other characters and the hitchhikers may feel a little flat when interacted with after their novelty wears thin, especially after multiple playthroughs where you might end up getting almost the same set of hitchhikers. Dialogues get repetitive, even the car conversations will start to evidently roll back to the start. And even once you’ve leveled them up to the max, it just feels as if their story ends just there, with nothing more to expound on even after being with them for nearly a month in-game. Because of this, I didn’t feel as attached to any of the hitchhikers (perhaps except The Dog, but that’s a different story). However, this shortcoming could be chalked up to its rather short runtime, a minimum of three to four hours per playthrough.
Will Benefit From More Intuitive Functions
A minor gripe I have with the map though is that when you pull it up while on the road, it centers not on your location, but the town or city you just left. You can’t zoom in or out of the map either, so your red location marker might not even be on the centered area because you’re too far from it already. Again, it’s a minor annoyance, but it could make for smoother gameplay and route planning.
Quests are also a little tricky to keep track of. While the map shows different colored pins depending on the quest, it can be rather confusing at times, especially when all your quests start piling up together.
Is Keep Driving Worth It?
Well-Worth The Journey
Keep Driving is a charming road trip RPG that is sure to give its players a wonderful journey through its locales, music, atmosphere, characters, and gameplay. The gameplay is engaging, the pixel art is charming and nostalgic, and the music ties it all together. With its multiple endings and tons of content to discover, it provides hours upon hours of gameplay. Cozy game fans who like a little challenge, RPG veterans, and fans of The Oregon Trail title will find this game a delight to play. It gives the vibes of a road trip all in the comfort of your own home and through a computer screen. So sit back, relax, and immerse yourself into this cozy road trip fantasy game.
| Digital Storefronts | |
|---|---|
| Steam |
|
| $17.99 | |
Keep Driving FAQ
Where can you play Keep Driving?
Keep Driving is only available on PC via Steam as of writing, and the developers have not shared if it will be available on other platforms in the future.
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Keep Driving Product Information
 |
|
| Title | Keep Driving |
|---|---|
| Release Date | February 6, 2025 |
| Developer | YCJY Games |
| Publisher | YCJY Games |
| Supported Platforms | PC (Steam) |
| Genre | Adventure, Simulation, Indie, RPG |
| Number of Players | 1 |
| ESRB Rating | RP |
| Official Website | Keep Driving Official Website |
