Let’s be honest, you’re probably too busy at the minute playing Baldur’s Gate 3 to consider playing anything else, let alone an early access indie game that’s only just dropped on Steam. However, if the pressures of dealing with a mind flayer parasite being stuck in your head are getting a bit too stressful, or you’re looking for a new racing game that’s about as ridiculous as the Katamari franchise, Drive Crazy is the game for you.
Instead of pretentious titles or mysterious premises, Drive Crazy is exactly what it says on the tin, as you control the driver of a Kei Truck who has to escape from an alien invasion that’s decimating all of Japan. If you want to survive, you’ll have to drive it like you stole it on anything that might look like a road, whether that’s dirt, offices, subway tunnels or the side of a building, as Japan collapses and explodes around you.
Drive Crazy is a racing game all about spectacle and survival, rather than racing against opponents for the best time, making it a somewhat unique experience. The game’s visuals might not be up to the same standards of something like Forza Motorsport or Gran Turismo, but you won’t really care about that when you’re driving through a seemingly never ending wave of explosions, missiles and floating fridges trying to knock you off the road.
The gameplay, even in this early access build, is great fun, though it can take some time to truly get to grips with how drift-happy the Kei Truck you control actually is. Nailing corners in some of the tight city levels can be quite challenging, but those who are enamoured with Drive Crazy will likely spend the extra hours and time perfecting their techniques so they can post the best scores on the game’s leaderboard.
The real charm of Drive Crazy is the fact that you can’t really predict what ridiculousness you’ll encounter next. An alien invasion in the middle of your racing game is pretty silly to start with, but then the game introduces features like wall-running, giving you a whole new avenue to explore the levels and avoid taking significant damage. There’s even boss fights, with one level seeing you square off against a giant brown bear that fires laser beams at you, and that’s about a 5 on the game’s daft scale. It needs to be seen to be believed.
Even though Drive Crazy is only an early access game at the minute, with 10 playable stages, there’s a tremendous sense of progression as new layers and obstacles are introduced. Sure, Drive Crazy might just be a one trick pony of an indie game, but the trick itself makes for a compelling and enjoyable hour or two of gaming for most people. Not every game needs to be a 70 hour epic to have value.
The developer, TubezGames, has promised more updates are coming to Drive Crazy in the future, like new levels and enemies, though hopefully we’ll also see additions like new vehicles too, just to make the gameplay even more varied. If future content for Drive Crazy manages to keep up the ridiculousness that’s already on offer, this could be a real indie winner.
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