PC REVIEW for Jalopy - Gaming Cypher

This is Gaming Cypher’s press tech demo review of Jalopy by Excalibur Games and Greg Pryjmachuck (Minsk Works).

Growing up I played a lot of Mario Kart, racing as my favorite characters in an attempt to get first place defined my childhood as much as Pokemon or Cartoons. Jalopy is a car-based game as well. This game is absolutely nothing like Mario Kart, the anecdote was intentionally misleading. Jalopy is a game that is hard to define. Take elements of Euro Truck Simulator and add them to an RPG and you only sort of grasp what this game is like.

Developed by Minsk Works, a UK developer, this game is really something else! In my first few minutes playing, I learned more about cars than I learned in a half year of Driver’s Ed. The game is fun in the same way eating weird food is interesting. If you take a step back and think about it, nothing you do is fun. You are just driving a terrible car around the world, while trying to keep the damn thing running. You don’t think you are having fun, but you are. You just can’t stop playing. You are intrigued.

Your computer probably hasn’t ever had to render this much brown before, the art direction looks both bad and good at the same time. It isn’t the next Battlefield, but the stylized graphics play very well with the Fall of Communism theme, I just wish their palate was beyond brown, gray, and gray-green.

This game is hard to review as the experience is very cathartic and player-tailored. Depending on what you want from a game, you will either love this game, or question why someone wasted time and money on this. Personally, I enjoyed the game. I found some bugs, but nothing too major. This game is new so it is to be expected that the game is not perfect. The potential is there, but this game is definitely not for everyone.

I highly suggest everyone try out this game, if simply for the experience. Is it the next game of the year? Probably not, but it is an experience that should be experienced. I give this game a 3.5/5.