What the Car? Is there any point in having racing game skills?

What the Car? is very clever in that it’s all car games rolled into one, only then turned stupid. But, like The Fool in Shakespeare’s plays, maybe it’s actually the stupid one who’s speaking the most truth. Yes, even if that word is ‘HONK’.

‘Stupid’ may sound like a criticism, but in this instance, it’s a word adorned with veneration as it channels the most absurd comedy this side of Monty Python’s Flying Circus. In the introductory sequence, the car is told (by a bear) to ‘get out of its wheels’ in order to get ready for the party.

And so off pop the wheels, and legs appear instead. Disappointing, you might think, if managing the relationship between wheels and tarmac is your raison d’etre – probably why you’re reading Traxion, for a start – but sometimes it’s good to just let go of seriousness for a moment and play something utterly ridiculous.

What the Car? is that game, letting go of the mental steering wheel and freewheeling through a picnic spread on its way to chop cucumber.

It’s complete madness. But at the same time, the game exhibits an undeniable fondness for everything that is ‘car’. You honk your horn to answer questions (which of course means only one answer). You beep like a passing taxi when you descend into a pipe to start a new level.

Classic cars are well known for having a ‘face’, but this car’s face is literal, exhibiting a slightly buck-toothed grin. It even makes ‘neow’ sounds when you hit a boost pad. But just when you start to think it’s nothing like a racing game and has no right being mentioned on Traxion, it pulls you back in with something clever. And yes, dammit, car-like.

For instance, completing a level in the best time often means you need to know about racing lines. When CAR IS WIDE, there’s no way to get round corners unless you know about minimising the turning angle. CAR ON OFFICE TROLLEY requires an understanding of inertia management in order to make it to the finish line.

Getting gold on some levels requires an element of one-shot precision normally reserved for your finest qualifying laps. So even when you’re just mowing the lawn, it’s still a racing game. You’re a car, trying to get to the finish line in the fastest time possible. The fact you have giraffes for wheels is by the by.

Not convinced? OK, how about the way the game plunders decades of racing games as the levels tick by? When the wide car slides around and remains a touch sideways after exiting a corner, that’s Sega Rally 2’s Riviera stage rearing its beautiful but odd-motioned head. Navigating the ‘WHEELS TOO HOT’ stage’s cambers and boosters needs your skills from WipeOut and F-Zero GX.

The HELI-CAR-PTER stages need similar skills to Diddy Kong Racing or Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing with their airborne vehicles, and CAR TOO FAST in the office level is as much about choosing your line and gingerly slowing down to make the corner as the Long Beach chicane on Ferrari 355 Challenge.

A proper newbie will be needing to learn all of these skills in one game, and that’s actually a genuinely impressive feat for software that appears to be completely throwaway.

As for those already well-versed in racing games, What the Car?’s most hair-raising moments are your bread and butter. If you’re more comfortable pelting along at full speed than mowing grass in a microgame reminiscent of an 80s coin-op, you’ll be much happier when scenery is flying past and you’re able to fix your eyes on the apex of the turn ahead, even if said apex is about three metres off the edge of a cliff (and invisible) because your car is 10x wider than it should be. What the Car? has that too. It’s just so very cleverly disguised.

And if you do go for gold on every level and collect every sticker, you’ll find it’s absolutely as much a test of your racing skills as the license tests in Gran Turismo. Sure, you may have to score a few penalty kicks along the way, but it never claims to be a driving game.

No, this is a car game. The car is the star, the bear is the team boss, and the accordion… well, the accordion is just silly.

Finally, it’s worth pointing out that you can create and edit your own levels, uploading them for all to enjoy. As with most level creation suites you do have to demonstrate that the level can be completed by doing it yourself but, aside from that, anything goes.

So you could, in theory, make some proper racetracks. Though if you did you would be absolutely missing the point. Don’t be stupid.

What the Car? is available now from Steam on both PC and Mac and is Steam Deck Verified right from its release day. It’s also on Apple Arcade on iOS, should you want to carry your personal silliness around with you in your jeans pocket.