My Summer Car

My Summer Car is an infamous open-world, survival, and perma-death simulation game developed by Amis-Aapeli and published by ToplessGun. Set in rural Finland during the summer of 1995, the game is renowned for its extreme complexity, highly realistic mechanics, unforgiving difficulty, and peculiar sense of Finnish humor.

The Ultimate Goal: Build the Satsuma

The central objective is to find all the necessary parts and tools scattered around the player’s isolated property and successfully build, register, and maintain a rusty, four-cylinder car known as the Satsuma. This process is neither quick nor easy.

• Detailed Mechanics: The Satsuma is assembled piece by piece, requiring hundreds of bolts, proper torque settings, and correct alignment of components like the engine block, carburetor, and steering column. Failure to use the right bolt or tighten a component properly often results in immediate mechanical failure, explosion, or fatal road accidents.

• The Manual: The game offers virtually no guidance, forcing players to consult an in-game technical manual—a dense, multi-page document that is the only key to assembling the car correctly.

Survival and Simulation

My Summer Car is as much a survival game as it is a driving simulator. The player must manage core needs:

• Hunger, Thirst, and Sleep: These are realistic and demanding. The player must drive into the nearest town, Peräjärvi, to purchase food and beer.

• Sauna and Hygiene: Maintaining cleanliness is crucial to avoid attracting swarms of flies and irritating NPCs.

• Perma-death: The game features a harsh perma-death system. If the player dies (which is frequent due to car crashes, drowning, or being run over by a hostile drunk driver), the save file is reset, and they must start the entire process of building the car from scratch.

Earning Money and Side Jobs

To fund the build and survival costs, the player must engage in various odd and often tedious jobs:

• Septic Tank Pumping: Driving a septic truck to nearby houses and carefully pumping raw sewage without spilling it.

• Firewood Delivery: Chopping wood and delivering it in a rusty pickup truck.

• Kilju (Moonshine) Brewing: Illegally brewing and selling potent Finnish moonshine, a risky venture that can lead to encounters with the police.

This blend of meticulous mechanical simulation, harsh survival elements, and dark humor (often involving aggressive Finnish NPCs and copious amounts of beer) gives My Summer Car its unique and frustratingly addictive character.