Navigate miles and miles of tyre changing, fuel burning, carburettor busting, mud clattering terrain, through night and day, rain and shine. Adapt to whatever the procedurally generated world of Jalopy can throw at you.
Posted on: September 11, 2025
Burrito
Verified ownerGames: 1487 Reviews: 46
Dread inspiring boredom
Jalopy is hard to play. Not that it's HARD, exactly, but it's dull enough to cause the kind of existential dread about your life wasting away that Russian and Eastern European games and literature sometimes strive for, but in a metatextual way independent of the gameplay itself. I should love this. I liked Quadrilateral Cowboy, so I should be all about the chunky graphics. I liked FTL and Oregon Trail, I enjoy the overall "get from A to B despite C D and E" playstyle. I enjoy Idle and Incremental games, a little time-sink-crunch shouldn't drive me away. I adore games with embodied interaction interfaces like Inscryption, the way the game handles managing 90% of the controls should really jive with me. But Jalopy is just too unengaging to engage with. Play consists of Doing The Obvious to keep the car going, then holding W down to progress. Pay enough attention to not drive into a railing, but it's not exactly respendent with navigational challenges - it's more like turns in the road exist so you don't put a weight on the W key and wander off to do something else between moments of occassional low grade engagement. There's so little game here, and it needs so much attention, for so little payoff, with such little to endear it, with such a slow and unrewarding gameplay loop. It's not worth investing the time. Maybe try The Legend of Bear Truck Trucker instead for your 'drive around, getting by' fix instead?
Is this helpful to you?
