IImagine a new racing video game. Whatever you imagined, What the Car? is not. While the world of racing games prides itself on cutting edge game engines and perfectly simulated motor engines that make the speedometer feel real and the driving experience more and more detailed and realistic, this is the opposite: this car literally drives around on foot.
Described as “a silly adventure full of races, laughs, and surprises,” What the Car? puts you in the shoes of a car with legs, sprinting and climbing one ridiculous obstacle after another to reach the finish line. “No one on the team owns or even likes cars,” says Tim Garbos, the game's creative director at Copenhagen studio Triband.
“That may seem wrong when you're making a car game, but it allowed us to naively misunderstand a lot of things about cars.”
Not only can this car walk around on two legs, it can also play foosball. It can even chop vegetables. Though it's technically a racing game, it's best thought of as a collection of mindless mini-games. Each of the hundreds of levels has a different challenge to reach the goal, whether that be a paraglider, a football or becoming an accordion to cross a crevasse.
Naturally, this not-so-racing game isn’t inspired by Forza, Gran Turismo, or even Mario Kart. Instead, the Triband team cites the adventures of The Legend of Zelda and Super Mario 64, with flashes of Katamari Damacy amid the chaos (cars have extra legs and roll around the track like balls). “The ever-changing format of the game is great when it takes inspiration from anything,” Garbos adds.
A version of the game was first released on Apple Arcade last year, where it won a Dice award for best mobile game. The PC version has been enhanced and will continue to receive monthly updates. Another addition is a full level creator, allowing users to build and share their own bizarre worlds. Garbos hopes that the levels will be approached in an appropriately nonsensical style: “People will create totally awful levels and force their friends to play them.”
The studio has previous experience pumping up humor with baseball bat-wielding cult hits “What the Golf?” and “What the Bat?” “As a studio, we’re big on the comedy game, and when we create a joke, we start by setting expectations by giving you a mundane backdrop, and then we subvert those expectations by doing something different,” Garbos explains.
As other successful parody games like Goat Simulator have shown, there’s an art to making something beautiful and silly. So how exactly does Triband strike that balance? “We focus on realism, car fans, and completely ignoring real vehicles while still providing a great overall experience. Sometimes you just need to give your car bigger legs, or make it fly or swim, and we make that happen…” [but] It has to be silly and funny, but it also has to work as a game. It has to be something you want to play for hours. It takes time and commitment.
Games are good at comedy, especially physical comedy. Think Octodad, Gang Beasts, Untitled Goose Game, and any game where characters comically glitch into the scenery. What the Car? joins the recently released Thank Goodness You’re Here! and the upcoming Baby Steps as games actively trying to make us laugh this year.
“I think the genre of comedy is underrated in video games compared to, say, television,” says Gerbos. “We take comedy pretty seriously. If you want to make someone laugh, it has to start with you. If it feels funny or silly, then you’re on the right track… Personally, I love showing this game to people and seeing their eyes light up at the jokes and trying to hide their little laughs. That’s why I make video games.”
We can’t help but wonder what kind of absurdist tri-band treatment we’ll get into next. “We’re just getting started,” Garbos teases. “We’re thinking about making parody games of common, well-known things, like newspapers.”
Source: www.theguardian.com
