Last January, our reviewer Brendan “Shitty Shitty Wham Bam” Caldwell called My summer car “a disgusting piss and pistons simulator that won't hold your disgusting little hand,” going on to warn that it will “either scare you away with its complexity or give you Stockholm syndrome with its mesmerizingly dismissive approach.” Now in early access, My winter car all this plus the “terrible cold and darkness of the Finnish winter,” according to developer Amistech Games.
The developers add that “even the time of day is difficult to keep track of. The world around us seems to be moving forward, but the player is crawling even deeper into the hole that he created in the original game.” Amazing! In context, the availability of generative AI disclosures on Steam page feels entirely appropriate, like luxuriously urinating on a frozen poo sandwich.
The premise seems to remain the same: you're trying to fix a terrible car without dying from burning, dehydration, being struck by lightning and falling off a moped, among other unpleasant consequences. Now you also have to worry about widespread ice and snow. The “cinematic” teaser below is insultingly opaque, showing only a man in a bobblehead hat smoking next to an indoor trailer, a vague echo of Nintendo President Satoru Iwata. contemplating a bananaexcept that My Winter Car isn't likely to be high in potassium or wholesome Nintendo-style fun. Regarding the developer's comment about losing track of time above, it's worth noting that there is parts of Finland in winter, when the sun doesn't rise for months.
The original My Summer Car also had some genetic AI in it. It seems to be more common this time. “Some base textures were created by artificial intelligence during development,” the developers note in their statement. “Some images and speech audio in in-game TV programs are created by artificial intelligence. Some in-game radio music is created by artificial intelligence.”
Frankly, using generative AI in a game like My Winter Car is a horribly unreadable escalation of the generative AI debate. As much as I despise the larger mass market implementations of this technology for their corrosive and reductive impact on art and cultureIt's this infamy that makes genAI suitable for a game that, as Brandy wrote, seems born of rotten misanthropy and “giggling schadenfreude.” I have a terrible feeling that My Generated Car will do well, but is unlikely to show up at any NVIDIA presentations.
