My Summer Car is an open world survival puzzle game. You start off at your remote family home with some money, a pack of sausages and a fully disassembled car in your garage. Your parents gave you one challenge before they left: Rebuild the family car and it's yours to do with as you please.

So begins your journey of learning, discovery and pain as you begin slapping engine components together, guessing the correct size and tighten the numerous screws that hold the engine together, and preparing the suspension and electrics on the chassis. You will find yourself lacking components, and will have to venture beyond the safety of your home into the wide open dangerous place that is reality. Things cost money, and soon you will have to take up menial jobs to fund your endeavors. Chopping wood for weekly firewood deliveries; helping Teimo by delivering fliers for his shop; getting Grandma's grocieries. After a bit of this and a bit of that, you place the last parts onto the Satsuma. Anxious, you start it for the first time and find it does not work. You realize you forgot to connect your starter to the battery. Then, you try again and viola, your hard work has paid off and the car runs. You decide to take it for a test drive to Fleetari's, but blow a piston halfway and your victory lap comes screeching to a halt. Your walk back is miserable.

But in defeat, you try harder. You undertake your work, building up the necessary capital to bankroll the repairs. You head to Fleetari's where you purchase every replacement part he has. You race home in your tractor carefully ensuring all the parts don't glitch out of the cabin. You take the engine apart and put it together with fresh parts. You slam it back in the car, top up all the appropriate tanks with coolant, brake fluid and motor oil. This time you come prepared, and you open the package you had ordered. Inside it? An air/fuel ratio gauge. You wire that sucker up and start the car again. With your handy screwdriver, you adjust the carburator, tuning it precisely until you reach the most efficient AFR. You break open the rocker cover and adjust the timing until that annoying ticking goes away. Finally, everything is put in place and you take it for a spin. You make it to Fleetari's, but don't stop and soon you're at Teimo's store. Your Satsuma has made it,

But now, one last challenge lies ahead: Inspection. Will your little bundle of love and hate make it? If you were attentive, and learnt alot during that process, then you have passed. You get your plates and your Satsuma is now yours. Clean it up and keep it as a museum-worthy ode to the Japanese car industry; turn it into a riced up bass machine with an amp + speakers in the boot; journey into the world in search of the GT parts and convert your car into the Satsuma GT: the special edition variant, or fit on sports suspension, wheels and partake in the ultimate Finnish family sport: Rallying. The choice is yours.

However, outside of the fun car building and maintenance mechanics, gameplay consists mainly of driving long distances along windy dirt roads where one mistake can get you stuck in a ditch or flipped over and leave you stranded, forcing you to walk home; performing mundane jobs like chopping and delivering firewood, dropping leaflets into mailboxes and grilling fish. Time becomes a very important asset and must be managed just as carefully as your hunger/thirst, or you will find yourself wasting time, food and money because you need to wait until Monday to buy the parts you require from Fleetari.

As you start new playthroughs, your routine will become more efficient and you will be pushing yourself to see how fast you can complete the Satsuma; pushing how fast you can get it to GT spec and pushing how fast you can come first in the Rally.

Dive into My Summer Car and enjoy having control over most aspects of your own digital car in 1990's Finland, but you may find that the mundane tasks you have to perform may put you off.

Oi Saatana!