Jalopy is a game laser targeted at me. It’s a game where you drive a small 2 Stroke 2 Cylinder East German built car across several Eastern Bloc countries, crossing boarders and selling roadside junk to buy supplies and gas for your car and hotel rooms. It’s done in a low polygon style but with a lot of funky in-game user interfaces (I’d call it Blendo Games meets Bauhaus)
The game begins with the player character waking in a garage, their mysterious uncle has appeared with a shell of a Laika car, modeled closely after the Trabant, which you then assemble piece by piece from junkyard parts. My Uncle wants to travel, but he doesn’t say where or why. So we are off.
In the first part of East Germany, the road turns into a slight incline and the car slows to a crawl. I laugh, as that’s what my moped does anytime it gets to a hill. The car downshifts into first, where it trundles uphill at 5kmh.
Mopeds and the Lakia in Jalopy are very similar, in that they require constant maintenance and vigilance to keep running. They are easy to fix with simple tools, require a bit of a period of learning, and with enough upgrades can be transformed from being generally miserable to actually road worthy.
We make it to Dresden late at night, or early in the morning, rolling the dirty car into an empty parking lot outside a hotel, and get a room for the night. My uncle lays down in the bed and his briefcase opens up to reveal a note. This, and my Uncle’s occasional words of dialog in transit, is how the game tells it’s stories.
Early attempts at making it out of Dresden were pretty miserable. The car’s components took a lot of damage before I came to a broken bridge, we backed up and went over a railroad bridge before I ran out of gas. It was pouring rain and pitch black, I quit the game.
The next time I discovered that all the tires had lost their durability during the previous legs and attempts, and all went flat at once. Again, it was late at night, raining, and I couldn’t figure out how to use the tire repair kit. The car kept falling off the jack due to maybe not being on flat ground, or maybe a bug, but it was pretty miserable. I elected to try to go as far as i could on all flat tires. We reached a slight incline, and the car could go no further.
As luck would have it, I was also having maintenance problems with my Tomos moped. After changing the jet in the bike it mysteriously stopped being able to rev up. I spent two days looking for air leaks, trying different jets, and cleaning the carb. I couldn’t troubleshoot it, and having huffed enough gas fumes, went back to the virtual car.
When I finally made it on the third try, we were short on cash. I couldn’t find any roadside junk to resell, and my car was mostly stock. Without a surplus of cash, you cannot manage the degradation of your car, and forward progress can’t happen. I end up making some pained decisions on wether I should bring a spare tire or a car repair kit. At one rest stop I sold the last of our gas and the car jack so we’d have money for the hotel. I couldn’t understand why we couldn’t sleep in the frickin car (game systems aside).
Once I found a few treasures on the side of the road, and started reselling them, we were soon flush with cash. With cash came anxiety, it could all be gone with a little bad luck. I find more treasures, and I have enough cash to buy some much needed upgrades for the car. A new engine block to go faster, a new air filter to better buff the engine’s constant wear, a new carburetor for better fuel economy. I at last make it to a junkyard and find one of the best ignition coils in the game.
I start to feel like I have enough money to spend it on cosmetics. Each Laikia store is limited in terms of car upgrades and paint options, and they change randomly. However, at this one they only have yellow paint and checker pattern graphics. I know what I have to do, and I purchase both, transforming my car into a taxi.
After all this the car reliably does a leg of the trip without running out of gas, usually taking a full tank. I fill up at each stop anyway, due to range anxiety. I have money for repair kits, so I always keep the car at 100%, stopping at the first sign of engine smoke.
Around this time too, I found the problem with my Tomos, the ignition wire got loose, causing intermittent spark.
The most difficult passage comes later, it’s a steep mountain stage with twisting switchbacks. The steep grade slows the car to a crawl, the turns are mostly dirt roads and I curse myself for not bringing a whole set of dirt tires to make the going easier. I reach the top of a set, thinking the climbing is over, but it isn’t. We reach a fork in the road, but down one path the road is covered in water, so I turn around and go the other way. Downhills are just as treacherous as I pump my brakes to keep us from skidding out or hitting the railing. Cresting a hill, it’s so steep I cannot see the road I’m driving onto, and it feels kind of sketchy.
Mercifully, we reach our destination. The town is one huge set of switchbacks, with the gas station at the very top and the hotel at the very bottom. I weigh getting gas now vs later, but we have most of a tank and i feel confident. I purchase a roof rack, which gives me more inventory slots. The car feels complete, and I’m starting to trust the machine more.
As we rolled into Istanbul, as the sun set, my Uncle remarked that there was now a bridge, and we would not need to use the Ferry. Unexpectedly, the bridge’s rigging was lined with hundreds of multicolored lights that all faded between colors in unison. The car trundled along the bridge and we both sat in silence kind of enjoying the moment as the podcast I listened to played on. It was the most realistic re-creation of the real life moments in a road trip when you and your passengers just absorb your surroundings, not needing to say anything.
but then we checked into a hotel, and the next morning he wasn’t there. In the passenger seat was a note saying that this was the end of our journey together, and that I was free to explore the world with the car (which was now mine), and to forget about him.
Immediately I started running around the streets of istanbul, looking for him, thinking maybe there’d be another story prompt to move the narrative forward. but there wasn’t. All I was left with was the rest of the world, a car, and a lack of closure. I wished he had opened up to me more, and felt confused and a little angry.
Over the course of the game, the Uncle started as a mysterious figure I really didn’t know about. With a few lines of dialog and text logs I started to know more and more about him. When he finally started to open up and I knew his motivations, I felt like I got to finally know him better, and then he was gone.
So with just a few in-game text logs, a sprinkling of dialog, and an 8 hour journey, this game manages to create an unforgettable game ending. It’s complex, messy, it doesn’t make a lot of sense, and because of that it feels human and realistic.
I could, in game, drive back to East Germany. I sort of want to earn enough to buy the fastest engine and the best parts for the car to see it’s true potential. I’m not sure I want to, it feels too empty.
The game’s minimalist presentation is a result of a single developer essentially doing most of the work. It feels like an alternate reality Blendo game by way of Bauhaus. It manages to evoke a time and place by letting the player fill in the gaps. It perfectly replicates the feeling of rolling into town at 1 in the morning, of changing tires on the side of the road in the rain, and the quite moments when you grow closer to someone.
