What the Car? is the superbly surreal sequel to What the Golf? — and the funniest game you'll play all year

What the Car? app screenshot
(Image credit: Apple)
What the Car?

What the Car? app icon

(Image credit: Apple)

iOS / iPadOS / MacOS (Apple Arcade)

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Last Friday brought a bumper batch of new games added to Apple Arcade, with Sim City’s spiritual follow up Cityscapes: Sim Builder grabbing much of the attention. Arguably just as essential a download from the new bunch of titles, however, is What The Car?, the latest mad-cap offering from Copenhagen-based indie studio Triband.

As the title suggests, the new game shares the same chaotic comedy of Triband’s previous hit, surrealist sports sim What the Golf?, but this time brings the silliness to the driving game genre.

So that naturally means that the vehicle you control sometimes has legs, a jet pack attached or can suffer from the flu as you try to career you way through obstacle-filled courses to get to the finish line.

Wacky physics-based gameplay

The races (we use the term loosely as there are no opponents on any of the tracks) have you delivering packages, climbing sky scrapers, or even chopping vegetables as a chef in a restaurant.

Fans of What the Golf? will be familiar with the wacky physics-based gameplay, along with the game’s unexpected twists which are peppered throughout, while a similar ranking system judges your performance based on the time taken to complete a course.

Alongside the main action, there’s also a pretty unique level editor, with track creation set up to be more like playing an entire secondary game altogether, as you drive around your creation, dropping in additions to the landscape. Super simple to use, yet capable enough to create wildly complex courses, the editor also has sharing functionality for letting your pals race around your masterpiece circuits.

Silly, subversive and crucially a delight to play, What The Car? is for anyone who thought Gran Turismo 7 lacked being able to control a limousine with a giraffe as a passenger while trying to avoid a giant cow with heat vision.


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Kevin Lynch
Contributor

Kevin Lynch is a London-born, Dublin-based writer and journalist.  He started out as a music writer in the late 1990s, before moving to the Daily Mirror to become the newspaper’s technology editor, during which time he wrote a weekly column that saw him chart the boom of consumer tech and gaming as well as the resurrection and rise of Apple Inc.  He has also served as editor of GuinnessWorldRecords.com and has been a member of the judging panel for the BAFTA British Academy Video Game Awards.