I have to confess that I haven’t played a car-based video game in a long time. I’m not sure if it was Night Driver or Cruisin’ USA, but I am lost when people start talking about how GTA 3 or 4 or 5 was better than 7 or whatever. I really don’t care, and I don’t know what makes up a “good” car-based game, but in my imagination, I can think of plenty that would be terrible. Can you?
How about Dealer Row? In this one, you play against a time clock and have to visit as many dealers as possible to buy a new Khundai Mountainous that your partner wants and get the best deal possible. I could show you a picture of the Mountainous, but it’s a crossover so generic (except for the pointless creases on the side and “distinctive lighting signature”) that you’d forget what I showed you ten seconds later anyway.
You can secure a deal at one place, but if you go and try to beat that deal at a dealer across town, there’s no way to ensure you can go back and get the same deal from the first place later. Level 2 involves getting the best trade-in value, financing rates, and trying to avoid add-ons like TruCoat. Oh, and you have to buy a car that day. Don’t buy or get screwed? You lose, Game Over.
Reviewers would dub it the “Sh**tiest game ever” and “A total soul-sucking waste of time.”
A worse one would be called Autopian – The Quest For Clicks. You play an automotive writer, and you need to keep coming up with posts until something hits and you get “clicks” from views. Three or even four “stories” in the game’s “day” is not unheard of, and you have to beat a Google algorithm that changes over the course of your play time in Level 2. You compete online against your friends, fighting for the same “audience” as set by the game’s software.
Once again, reviews of the game would be awful. “Terrible, and completely unrealistic since nobody would be required to do anything like this in real life.” If they did, though, I think they’d actually love it.
Matt suggested “24 Hour of Le Mans Steward,” where you simply add weight to competition cars.
Now it’s your turn. What horrendous ideas for car video games can you come up with?
Top graphic images: DepositPhotos.com
The game is called “Impounded?”
It starts with you wandering a parking lot looking for your car. You spend the first 30 minutes to an hour discovering new sections of the lot that you MUST explore completely to determine your car isn’t there.
Now that you’ve searched everywhere, you can call the police and report your car stolen.
In 3-5 hours a police officer will show up and take a statement. They’ll give you a report number and leave. You’re still in the parking lot, so now you’ve gotta figure out how to get home.
A week passes with no news, so you call the police station and are put on hold. 3-5 hours later (you cannot hang up during this time or the section starts over), someone comes on and tells you there’s no record of the report. And now the front desk is closed, so you can’t go down there until tomorrow at the soonest.
You show up the next day at the police station. After talking to 7 people with no useful information, you finally are informed that your car wasn’t stolen, it was towed by parking enforcement! It’s been in the impound lot this entire time accruing storage charges!
Now you must get across town (in rush hour) to the parking enforcement impound lot. Once there, you must produce increasingly arcane documents to prove you own the car, have insurance, and valid registration. As you wait there, your health bar steadily wanes, and can only be boosted by purchasing vending machine food and drinks. But leaving the line to do so risks sending you to the back!
Once you’ve been through multiple lines and given them everything they ask for, you will be taken to your car. It’s in a muddy lot, parked tightly between other cars. Good luck worming your way in!
Then, once you’ve gotten inside, you discover that somehow, the battery is dead. Go on a quest to find an employee with a jump box!
Five hours later, your car has started. But as soon as you pull out of the slot it’s in, you discover the entire passenger side has been sideswiped.
Now you begin the phase where you attempt to get parking services to acknowledge they damaged your car and will pay to fix it. This phase has no end…
I mean, I could, but Steam’s shovelware section has done it for me. There’s so much “X simulator” that looks 20 years old and has the same ripped Unity Store assets that I’d play these two over them given they’re actually competent and don’t crash or have game breaking bugs.
In fact I think both journalism and car dealer games are a thing. “Autopian,” if done well, could be an entertaining thing in the fashion of “Papers Please,” except with less oppressive soviet state border guarding and more trying to decide whether or not Torch’s latest fever dream will scare off too many new readers, even if the core base can’t get enough.
Honestly, if I wanted to make the worst car game, I’d have a Unity asset flip scamfest, where there is car, but you can’t drive it without the $100 DLC. And the driving is janky. And it crashes a lot. And has a hidden crypto miner, which runs all the time and is the only thing that doesn’t crash. And it’s just called Car Game.
It wouldn’t surprise me if it didn’t exist already.
Ungran Turismo 43: Weekday Urban Driving
The goal is simply to make it to your DMV appointment across town in time, knowing that if you miss it, you won’t get another until well after your registration expires. In order to do so, you need to make it through traffic that’s dominated by people who have nowhere to go and all day to get there.
Try to contain yourself as you drive down the road no faster than 10 mph below the speed limit!
Feel the excitement as you merge onto the freeway behind someone going 25 mph as semis whiz by!
Feel the wonder as the person in front of you signals left and moves right!
Feel the impatience as everyone else counts to 10 after the light changes before they proceed through the intersection!
Feel the rage as everyone else’s primary driving goal is the avoidance of the perception of any g-force in any direction!
Plot your route carefully! Going near a medical clinic or hospital will certainly cost you time!
Points deducted for any raised fists or middle fingers! (Hey, that’s someone’s grandma you’re flipping off there.)
Rush Hour: Commuter
You start with a subcompact car and sit in bumper to bumper traffic as you commute to a soul-sucking job. If you get there on time, you get to keep the job. Eventually, you can save enough of your earnings to upgrade your commuter car. at the end of the day you sit in traffic until you get home. Enhancements include real-time traffic stops, crash damage, and dings from your car sitting in a parking lot all day. If you can’t afford to fix your car, you’re given a bus schedule.
Super M4 Managed Motorway Driver.
It’s on the Super NES so we’re using Mode 7 graphics like the original Mario Kart or F-Zero. The game is to drive on my local motorway where average speed cameras have been deployed and the limit is set to 50mph. The game is to drive the full length of the managed motorway section at 50mph without changing lane. Competing the game unlocks hard mode, where you do the same thing only without cruise control.
Trailer Towing: The Game
Pick your trailer. 4×8 utility, jon boat, Seadoo, 20′ bow rider, popup camper, 20′ bunkhouse, 30′ bumper pull, 35′ gooseneck. Pick your tow vehicle from Smart car to generic small/medium/large crossover, half ton pickup, 3/4 ton, 1 ton with choice of engine from wheezy V6 to Powermaxins diesel. Pick the road from urban jungle, suburban stroad wasteland and open highway. Pick the destination. Boat ramp with idiot drivers cutting in front to impossibly tight camping spot. Then add obstacles like the 4WD breaks or running low on go-juice. Winning is defined as successfully getting the trailer into its spot without damage and without being threatened with divorce.
Dealership Workshop/service Manager;
Mostly text and excel table grid based game. You answer calls and emails from customers and mechanics and salesmen. You have to find out how long repairs or services on certain cars should take in theory, and try to find slots to fit service and repairs in the busy time table of the workshop.
Try to make sure that parts and special tools are available when the repair or service is scheduled. Make sure you have enough employees to do the work, while balancing the meager budget the dealerhip lets you use.
And mechanics and salesmen and customers all complain about everything that is not finished on the time they had hoped, or with the result they had hoped for.
The closest you get to actual cars in the game is when you receive keys from customers as the car is delivered to the dealership, and when you hand them back to them as you explain why the repair or service took longer and was more expensive than expected.
There are probably people out there who would like this game , but I’m not one of them…
Dealership Porter. Your job is to organize and line up the dealer’s inventory, making sure all the fast-selling assortment of greyscale crossovers are lined up neatly facing the major intersection, while the one sporty car in inventory gets a primo spot in the showroom (so you are unable to drive it). Beginning levels start you at a Hyundai or Toyota store, but as you progress through your career, you’ll be moved up to BMW or Mercedes, maybe even making it to the top-level Ferrari or Porsche store. Play smartly, and you’ll have access to all the coolest cars* in this exciting simulator!
*top speed limited to 5 MPH and you are not allowed to drive off the dealer lot
There’s some great suggestions here, but so many opportunities to make them worse with in-app purchases.
Black Friday shopping mall parking simulator. You circle endlessly trying to find a parking spot so you can save $20 on a new air fryer only to get hit by someone trying to take the 1 spot you found which triggers an unskippable 30 min cut scene where you exchange insurance info.
Desert Bus already exists.
Insurance Claim Simulator, it starts with someone rear-ending your car, and ends when you convince the insurance company to fix your car for $2,100 instead of totaling it for $1,200 (it’s worth $12,000).
They shouldn’t. This could be bundled with some other games, like Housekeeping Challenge and Surviving Holidays 2: now with Kids; as adulthood training.
Would crush some kids dreams, but would make some understand our complains.
“2040: the Ultimate Future Driving Simulator”
You sit in a simulated generic grey CUV interior with multiple unnecessarily large touch screens. You input your destination. You then watch AI generated short-form videos punctuated by 8 second AI generated ads that you have to press a touch screen to skip. Eventually the car stops at your destination.
Repeat.
Oh, and future versions of the game will include Simulated Subscriptions where your car randomly prompts you subscribe to various optional features. One of the more popular options will be the “comfort package.” This feature stops a mechanical lever from randomly whacking you in the backside while you are driving.
“Simulated Subscription” mode is only available with the real subscription to the game.
Given how popular train simulators are, I bet this would do well.
“TSD Rally” Time, Speed, Distance Rally’s were (maybe still are) a big thing with the SCCA in Michigan.
The goal is to complete a set of navigation instructions to hit a goal time at the end of the course, with random checkpoints to make sure you are driving the entire course. These are done on open roads with traffic. Go too fast or too slow and you get penalized. The average speed for a road is almost always below the speed limit, to compensate for stops, turns and traffic.
The game is only playable in real time and cops are frequently seen to pull you over for rolling stops signs, busting u-turns in the middle of the road, going too fast or too slow. The co-driver becomes more and more detached as the game progresses to simulate real boredom. This makes finding the turns harder and the deviation from the goal time nearly impossible to keep up with. Which creates a vicious cycle of needing to go faster (or slower?) to compensate.
“ICE Block!” The object of the game is to maneuver your car through ICE vehicle formations disrupting operations without getting shot.
Auto Designer Challenge
A text-based game (remember them?) that consists solely of emails back and forth between you, the designer, and your higher-ups wherein they demand ‘a more active side profile’ and a ‘more contemporary DRG’ and more ‘sporty’ fake vents and creases on the exterior, more screen and fewer switches and more gloss black ‘richness’ in the interior, while you try to defend your design and your dignity.
“Used Car Shopping on Facebook” – a Pokemon style car hunting game
You get bonus points for smashing the ‘Is this still available’ button, but half of your leads ghost you for no reason.
Lowball offers can win you a good deal but also can cause sellers to reduce your health.
Seller used HIDDEN RUST! It was extremely effective! Buyer took 50 damage!
You used DOT TIRE CODES! The seller was unharmed!
Seller countered with JUST INSPECTED! Buyer took 10 damage!
You countered with CROSS STATE SALE! Seller takes 20 damage!
DMV ‘attacks’ include:
Failing to notarize your title in NC
Bill of Sale printed on two pieces of paper
Arguing the sale price in a ‘pricing duel fight’ with the angry DMV clerk
Playing a match3 mini-game while waiting for a timer at the DMV level
I mean, Nintendo could kill it with this one.
CAR: THE GAME
Single player. Pick your player
A: That poor Volkswagen assembly guy. Can you make enough GTIs or Atlases? Are you going to be employed tomorrow?
B: (Picture of John Lovitz) The executive. Can you pick the right mix of models, propulsion types, incentives etc to make your sales increase?
C: The designer. Congrats, you’ve landed the BMW account. How
uglystrikingly different can you make the cars before people stop buying?D: Chrysler salesman. (Very hard difficulty)
E: Rich SOB. Congrats, you’re rich as hell and now you can build that car you’ve always dreamed about. Will it be a success or are you throwing your money away?
F: The Consumer. Limited funds, big dreams, little hope.
Used German Luxury Car Owner
In the game you buy a used German luxury car. The check engine light comes on during your drive home. You diagnose it and fix it to score points. You go for a drive. There’s some kind of electrical snafu. You diagnose it and fix it to score points. You go for a drive, and it’s really running well now. Just a joy to drive…until the timing chain guides fail. You diagnose it and fix it to score points. You go for a drive and it’s running great. But you discover an oil leak. You decide it can wait until you deal with the water pump which is starting to make noise. While fixing these items to score points, you decide to do an oil change. Uh-oh, glitter in the filter. Time to do the rod bearings….
It just goes on and on and on like this until you finally sell the thing for pennies on the dollar compared to cost of ownership. You didn’t win. No one ever wins.
The game ends when you buy a car from a Japanese manufacturer.
And yes, I’m still bitter.
That game was already created in the 1980’s. It was called Frogger. My frog always got ran over dammit.
Designated Driver 2: Leaving the Concert.
You get to be the designated driver for your drunk ass friends, trying to get them all home after the big concert and before they barf in the backseat of your car. But you’re stuck in the parking garage for the whole game inching along, trying to not get backed into or run over other drunks staggering through traffic. All the while, each friend’s ‘barf gauge’ slowly creeps into the red. When the gauge goes red you have to jump out and drag them from the backseat before they ruin the upholstery. The longer it takes to get them cleaned up the farther you slide back in the line to get out.
Features:
The color pallet is all earthtone and grey.The sound track is your drunk friends singing showtunes off key with all the wrong lyricsYou can turn on the radio but all the stations are AM talkshow old men telling you how the USA used to be a great country and how they knew how to fix everything.The check engine light is on.Your friends won’t wear their seatbelts so the warning light is on and the reminder keep dinging.
Muffler shop waiting room:the movie:the game
Bonus points for braving the restroom.
A hardcore racing sim that’s actually a typing game, where you have to manually type every steering, pedal, and shifter input.
Here’s one:
Take a beloved racing game franchise from the ’90s.
Remove the exotic supercars.
Remove the scenic vistas and diverse track designs.
Remove the frantic, tense, high-stakes police pursuits.
Replace all of that with putting ugly fiberglass bodykits and go-fast stickers on crummy economy sedans and racing them at a brisk 80 MPH around the same handful of city streets for several hours.