Summit Drive: The coziest rage game I’ve ever played now has a demo to try

There are two types of people in the world: Those who enjoy driving and those who would rather be in the passenger seat, and yes, I mean that both literally and metaphorically. Summit Drive is an indie game that puts you in control of the vehicle in every sense, whether you like it or not. 

Summit Drive is a game made by solo developer Luke Kim. It could be described as a cozy game if you judge it by the aesthetic, but look a little deeper, and you’ll find a Foddian game unlike any I’ve ever seen before. It’s hilarious, frustrating, and as with most rage games, weirdly addictive. 

Best of all, there’s a demo available right now.

In the driver’s seat

In Summit Drive, you’re in control of a camper van and need to drive it to the top of a mountain via a long and very winding road towards the summit. Your vision is massively obscured by the interior of the vehicle, and you’re in control of steering, accelerating, and operating the gears.

Now, I’m a lifelong passenger. I have driven and I’m capable of driving, but that doesn’t mean I enjoy it or have any reason to do so. However, all of my driving experience has been with an automatic gearbox, so suddenly throwing gears at me is a whole new and wild experience. In fact, with my mind in automatic gear, I didn’t even realize there was a second gear until I went sliding backwards down a hill for lack of power. I needed more thrust. 

All of this is, you would think, relatively straightforward. Except both steering and acceleration are controlled by the left mouse button, while changing gear and braking are both controlled by the right mouse button. If you want to turn the wheel, you have to accelerate. If you move the mouse even a little bit while braking, you’ll change gear. It becomes a balancing act of movement versus button pushing, and it’s more difficult than you’d first think. 

Oh, and the gears are reversed purely to mess with people who do have some basic knowledge of how a manual gearbox is meant to work. I would never have realized this had the developer not pointed it out.

Aesthetic vs. mechanics

Now that I’ve briefly gone over the borderline infuriating mechanics, it’s only fair that I touch on how utterly adorable the premise and aesthetic of Summit Drive are. I mean, the aim here is to get to the top of the mountain so that you can enjoy a lovely view; it’s almost cozy in a sense, and who doesn’t love a nice hike in the wilderness from time to time?

Couple that with the little bird in the driver’s seat, and the juxtaposed sense of coziness only increases. He’s cute, and the environment is really pretty to look at, at least what you can see of it through the windows that surround you. But you don’t get much time to actually look and appreciate your surroundings while you’re triple-tasking with your left mouse button, double-tasking with your right mouse button, and fearing for your life on the edge of a sheer cliff. 

In a way, this juggling of tasks with just a few options open to you is a strange metaphor for the juggling act of life. And Summit Drive was created with this in mind, designed to explore the ‘why’ that keeps players coming back to games that get under their skin.

If you want to get to grips with the controls of Summit Drive and experience the joy and frustration of the drive to the top, you can go and play the demo right now via Steam. While you’re there, give the game a wishlist and follow to be kept in the loop as development progresses!