Riding on the open roads until you reach a festival across the other side of the country doesn’t sound like the most obvious set up for a management-focused RPG, but that’s exactly what Keep Driving is about. You have a car to upkeep and upgrade, a route to plot on a procedurally generated open world, an inventory to Tetris around, and decisions that’ll pop up on the way, like, say, do you pick up the strange, barefoot runaway bride waving you down? It’s had a long journey to release, but it’s finally coming out on February 6.
One of YCJY Games’ two main developers jumped on to Reddit to announce the release date, calling it a “management and road RPG about looking back and moving forward, just like any good road trip.” He then breaks down some of what we see happening in the trailer below: “Along your journey, you’ll pick up hitchhikers with their own stories and abilities that help you in the game’s turn-based combat. You’ll customize and repair your car, take on odd jobs and explore off-the-beat paths too. There’s a lot of resource management, as every action costs something (energy/items/money/time), so you’ll have to be strategic about how you progress on the road.”
Keep Driving is apparently the work of just two friends (and one “awesome sound designer”) who both started development a few years ago, though there’s a very good chance you’ve already heard of or played the game yourself. Our Dustin Bailey wrote about chugging two liters of soda to survive an all nighter with an N64 game in his trunk in the game’s brilliant Steam Next Fest demo, which got over 70,000 downloads and led to more than 170,000 wishlists. Keep Driving’s Steam demo is still available to try ahead of its release this week, too.
For more, keep an eye on the upcoming indie games of 2025 and beyond.
