A Car Game So Realistic That It Has Permadeath

My Summer Car is a game about chugging beer and tinkering obsessively with a beat-up old sports car. It is, according to its creator, the most realistic car game ever.

I honestly can’t tell if My Summer Car is a joke or not. On one hand, its website says things like:

“MY SUMMER CAR is a game about car building and everlasting Finnish summer.”

Which sounds kinda beautiful, in its own way. Peaceful. Zen-like. But then it continues, spiraling out of control and driving off a cliff into a sort of flaming madness. Words can’t do it justice, so here is a picture:

Yes, there is permadeath. In a game about chilling out at home over the summer and working on a car. Then again, you can drink (heavily) and drive in the game, so perhaps it’s meant to serve as a stern cautionary message.

If all of that wasn’t bizarre enough, here’s the full feature set:

The guy who’s making it, Johannes Rojola, is a total trip, too. In the above video, he says things like:

“This game is all about realism. Not about fantasy of driving games… driving a car and fixing a car. This is not fantasy game, this is realism game. And what games like Gran Turismo and Forza and Assetto Corsa and Project Cars and stuff like this, they are fantasy games. They are for you to be… able to masturbate to cars and car culture and shiny paints and lifestyle that you’ll never going to have. This game is not like those games. This game is about realism. Only thing you masturbate to is a girl picture. Because that’s all you get. You don’t masturbate to this car, because that is sick. And that what this game is about. This is car game with realism.”

Fuck me, at this rate I’m gonna have to find a real car for all my masturbation needs. He does kinda have a point, though: a lot of realistic racing games are as much about flashy, sometimes obnoxious car culture as they are cars. I feel like Forza Horizon 2 takes that to an almost ridiculous extreme with its impossible dream vacation car heaven populated largely by insufferable douchebags. So maybe a return to simpler times is needed. Something a bit more gritty, a lot less glamorous.

Then again, My Summer Car seems patently ridiculous in an entirely different way, so we’ll see. The game will be out soon in some form of Early Access. It’ll use a “random pricing model,” which means the price will randomly shift to a number between one and twenty dollars every time the game updates. I have no idea what to make of that, either. But I think… I think I kinda love everything about this. It’s janky and awkward and un-sexy as fuck, but it’s all that stuff dialed up to 11. If nothing else, we’ll get a fun-to-watch car wreck out of the whole deal. Color me optimistically curious.

Thanks for the tip, Morris.

To contact the author of this post, write to [email protected] or find him on Twitter @vahn16