TL:DR: My Summer Car caters to some very niche gamers, or those who really want an indie experience.

At the heart of My Summer Car is a painstakingly crafted copy of a real-life car, a 1970's Datsun 100A, (dubbed "Satsuma," sometimes, "♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥") which seems to have been coded to work like a real car. A car which starts the game entirely disassembled, (at least, that disassembly is confined to major components; there's no need to say, clean or re-build the carburettor) and which the player might be inclined to assemble... without any tutorial, manual, or other help for how one would do that! And perhaps that's the intended audience for My Summer Car; gear heads who know their way around an engine. The detail here is to such a degree, that working on the Satsuma needs the correct size tool to tighten or loosen any of the bolts. The developer seems to have spared us the need to apply a torque-spec, but to get the Satsuma running well, the player will have to adjust valve clearances, adjust the carburettor, the alternator, and the distributor!

I can't stress enough how real the car actually behaves; if you get the air-fuel mixture wrong, the Satsuma will backfire, and risk stalling. Forget to fill the engine with oil? You'll do damage to critical components if you try to run the Satsuma without oil. Neglect to bolt the half-shafts (CV joints)? The Satsuma will start! But you won't be able to make it move. If the battery doesn't have enough charge, the engine won't turn over. I've never seen this level of attention to detail in any other "car simulator;" the Satsuma behaves in most respects just like its real-life counterpart.

And yet, building, maintaining, and trying to drive around in the Satsuma is only half the game! The other half is surviving and living in rural Finland in the eternal summer of 1995. The player's parents have disappeared on an extended vacation, leaving the house, the disassembled Satsuma, a case of beer, and a few provisions in the fridge to the exclusive use of the character, who was, ironically, born in the back seat of that same Satsuma, as the opening cut-scene clearly shows. The player will have to manage the players thirst, hunger, stress, fatigue, personal hygiene and money. Failure to pay attention to these leads to potentially unpleasant consequences; death from dehydration, starvation, stress, heart attack. Fail to pay the bills which show up in the house's mailbox for too long, and the house's utilities will be cut off. So, half the time, you spend trying to maintain and build the Satsuma, the other half, you'll commute to town to buy groceries, alcohol, and do various odd-jobs, like delivering firewood, or emptying septic tanks to earn enough money to keep yourself alive and healthy in rural Finland. And all this with no hand-holding, and largely being accountable solely to yourself.

As an example , one of the ways, at first, intermittent ways to get around is to borrow your uncle's van. It's intermittent, because sometimes that van isn't available to the player. At one point, I had some things I wanted to do for a day, but the van wasn't available, effectively stranding me alone in the house. So, I got the character drunk to the point of passing out on Finnish home-brewed sugar-wine (which, like just about everything else in the game, is brewed pretty much just like real-life!) called Kilju, and woke up with a hangover, which caused the game's camera to shake uncontrollably.

Another example, if you open the Satsuma's radiator while it's still hot, the player's character will go blind from the pressure and steam.

Perhaps it's this degree of attention to detail that is now curiously spawning spiritual successors to My Summer Car.
I truly am struggling to decide whether or not to recommend this game; I think it's unplayable without a few quality of life mods, it's incredibly janky, there's no ability to pause the game, and even a "pause anywhere" mod doesn't even work quite correctly.

The physics have a tendency to behave unpredictably, if you jump on the Satsuma's hood for example, I've seen the Satsuma be launched 50 feet into the air and flip over.

Moreover, My Summer Car demands significant devotion to truly appreciate; because the Satsuma is old, even by 1995 standards, a lot of the parts are well-worn and will fail, which could leave you stranded. In a game with a huge map, it could be a very long walk to get assistance, and the player stands a good risk of dying from thirst before they're able to get anywhere. This can be truly unforgiving in a game where permadeath is turned on by default; if you leave permadeath on, the game deletes your save when you die, and causes you to have to restart everything from scratch.

My Summer Car is I think, above all, unique. That uniqueness sets it apart from virtually anything else, but it's also so unique that I can't tell you whether or not I'd recommend the game; the appeal of My Summer Car is probably always going to be very niche, and it's definitely not without its flaws.

Steam won't let me post a review, unless I give the game a thumbs up, or a thumbs down. I'll give it a thumbs up, because I think that there's something here which is more than the sum of its parts, and I haven't ever seen anything quite like this before, or since.

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