What car? is a celebration of games through pure creativity, unfettered by narrative logic. It's not as surprising as What is golf?and it doesn't have the virtual reality immersion of What the hell?But like the previous two games, it still offers more charm and quirkiness than you'll see in most other titles. Why does the car have legs? you ask. Just shut up and play.
As we learned from What is golf?The developers at Triband Games specialize in subverting your expectations. So while your main character is a car, you won't actually be racing around on four wheels on boring, old tracks. Your car sprouts legs from the start, and that alone teaches you to expect the unexpected. Each level you play puts a slightly weirder twist on things: you'll have long legs, you'll get a rocket pack and stretchy legs, and you'll transform into a soccer ball.
What is the car?? The game takes its gameplay ideas to levels of absolute absurdity, but that’s what makes it so great. After playing as a soccer ball for a while, some levels transformed into massive foosball tables. The game didn’t need to pause to explain the changes or tell me what buttons to press. I sensed that the car action button spun the kickers, and my brain quickly remapped itself to the rules of foosball. This experience can be a little frustrating for those unfamiliar with the glory of tabletop soccer, but the game effectively uses failure as a teaching tool.
After debuting on Apple Arcade last year, What car? It’s available now for PC players on Steam. And before you ask, yes, it’s a truly seamless portable Steam Deck experience. While lush, with a lively aesthetic and cartoonish characters, the game doesn’t require advanced graphics hardware. (Its minimum specs? A mere 2.6GHz Intel Quad Core chip, 2GB of RAM, and an 11-year-old GeForce GT 750M mobile GPU.)
For the most part, the levels in What car? They're not too difficult, but if you want more of a challenge, you can try to get gold trophies by completing stages faster. That carrot was enough to make me replay stages several times. There's also a collectible card hidden in each stage, as well as other secrets.
While Triband Games claims that you will be able to complete What car?The main stages of 's last between three and five hours, and it's estimated that another nine to twelve will be needed to obtain all the secrets and gold trophies. There are also user-generated levels to consider (most of which are really challenging), as well as a level generator for your own creations.
These days, I often play alongside my five-year-old daughter Sophia, who has become absolutely… Minecraft-stacked. (Is there any kind of Minecraft A support group for tired parents who never got into this? Please someone help me.) He ended up sacrificing some of his limited gaming time just to watch me play. What car?She was thrilled when I was able to strike gold on particularly difficult stages, and couldn't stop laughing at the silly car transformations and the damage I would inevitably inflict on the bears that populated the levels.
I identified with his sense of wonder. Through his whimsy and delirious inventiveness, What car? It's a testament to the power of games. It's something I felt at the same age, when I first encountered Super Mario Bros. on the NES. I didn't wonder why mushrooms made Mario stronger, or why I could go down pipes. My daughter never wondered why the car had legs, or why the rules of the game kept changing. She was just excited to be along for the ride.
