Cheap Car Repair is…a car repair sim. I know, I’m as shocked as you are. Developed by Little Dog Games and published by Simplicity Games and PlayWay S.A., the game was released on Steam on May 28th.
Just Slap Some Paint On It
When I first saw this game get announced way back in the day, I was really excited to try it out! I love car repair sims! (Even though I never even got my license, and I don’t care about IRL cars whatsoever). Was the wait worth it? Eh. Let’s see.
Gameplay
In Cheap Car Repair, you run your very own car repair shop in a small Polish village…but you are completely broke, so you gotta improvise! Cut corners, steal parts and try not to get caught.
Bootleg repairs are the main feature in the game, like swapping windshield fluid for dish soap, mixing water into gas, or just straight-up spray-painting over any rust you are supposed to remove. The prologue even has you replace an air filter with a sponge from your kitchen and a steering wheel with a water valve you nabbed. Unfortunately, outside of a few story missions, you don’t really get to improvise as much. It’s a bit sad that the main feature is so underutilized, but it doesn’t entirely stop the game from being fun!
Cash and Repairs
You can find a ton of used car parts in your neighbors’ sheds and yards all around town. Surely they won’t mind you “borrowing” them for a bit. But it does turn the game into more of a memory puzzle than anything else. You either have to remember which neighbor had some super-specific part, or you need to order it from the store and make a big loss, as the customer usually doesn’t pay you enough to cover all the stuff you buy. Eventually, you also just run out of the parts that you can find “in the wild” since they don’t respawn at all. Not even the ones in the scrapyard. It kind of feels like such an easy fix to have at least some area be replenished every now and then.
If you run out of cash entirely, you can collect wood or mushrooms and sell them to some NPCs (which sometimes makes you more money than certain car repairs). I think those don’t respawn either, so I’m not sure if you can softlock yourself.
Another nitpick I have is that repairing the cars themselves can be a bit janky. Though that is probably on purpose. Unlike most car repair sims, you can’t highlight certain parts. Since they are in different spots depending on the vehicle, it can get a little tricky to find what you are looking for. I don’t mind that at all, but I still would love a highlight feature. I’ve spent way too much time looking for a tiny spark plug I dropped on the ground and never saw again.
There is also no key rebinding. Sorry non-QWERTY / QWERTZ people! But hey, at least you get a dedicated button that makes your player character say swear words.
The Story
Okay, I’ve been complaining a lot, but what’s actually fun about the game?
Cheap Car Repair‘s gameplay doesn’t feel too repetitive actually! It isn’t very hard to stay under the radar, so it’s not necessarily a difficult game. But it is a nice, chill experience. And if you want to suffer, they are planning on adding a new difficulty to make your life even more miserable, hooray! They have a full post-release roadmap. Granted, some of the stuff feels like it should have been in the game from the get-go, like full gamepad support or your car actually using gas when you drive it, but it’s better than nothing.
The game’s story is quite alright, actually. One mission has your cousin asking for an American Mustang, which you can’t really get your hands on easily in the tiny village you live in. So you get some junk car off of a guy in town and spray-paint an eagle and US flag onto the hood, which, as janky as the spray-painting is, was rather fun!
The side quests are really neat, relatively short, but breathe some life into the dead, empty town. They break up the cycle of the main story nicely and don’t only have you fix up cars. Some of them are funny, leading you on a wild goose chase for pennies. For example, one has you follow a dead husband’s hints on where he buried a ton of cash. Once you eventually find it and bring it back to his widow, she tells you that you can keep it all! Millions actually!…in the old currency. Which converts to around 15 bucks. Welp.
Graphics & Audio
Cheap Car Repair‘s graphics are pretty standard for the genre. A semi-realistic style that fits right into the feel of the game. If it looked any more polished, it wouldn’t look as run-down as it’s supposed to. I’ve been playing the game on the highest graphic settings and haven’t had any issues with the framerate or anything like that. My one problem is that the camera speed while riding a vehicle is completely different from the regular one, so I did have some motion sickness issues here and there. The game also has a setting to turn off the drunk visual effects that show up when you have a couple of beers, which is nice in terms of accessibility.
The game does disclose that they used AI “to modulate voices and generate songs”. However, they also clearly used it to AI-generate images for flyers and signs around town, which is not stated in the Steam AI Content Disclosure. Most of the environmental audio is fine, but if you won’t put love and effort into your audio design, I won’t put effort into writing about it, so I won’t talk about the voices or music in this review.
Longevity
How much time you spend on the game is entirely up to you, and whether you just grind out the main story or actively seek out all the side missions. I spent about 7 hours on the game before getting bored with it. There were definitely some side quests left, and I could have done more of the regular repair jobs you can take at any point; I just didn’t feel like it. There will be more updates to the game in the future, which will add more quests, so that may also add more playtime.
Final Thoughts
All in all, Cheap Car Repair has a fun premise, but I feel like it doesn’t live up to its full potential. The bootleg repairs and improvisations are great when they actually happen. The main feature of the game feels pretty underutilized outside of some select story missions. Between the janky mechanics and the genuinely unnecessary use of AI, the game definitely has its flaws. Still, the fun quests and quirky story missions can give you a decent few hours of gameplay. Just don’t expect it to keep you hooked forever.
Overall, I am giving Cheap Car Repair the Thumb Culture Silver Award.
Disclaimer: A code was received in order to write this review.
If you enjoyed this review, why not check out my previous article about FORENSIC – M.E. Protocol
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