A brutal Finnish car survival sequel pulled in over 21,000 players just hours after launch, despite making no effort to be welcoming.
The obscure game follows My Summer Car, a cult hit about hand-assembling a car while juggling hunger, money, and survival in rural Finland. At its peak, the first game only pulled 5,924 concurrent players on Steam, yet over time it amassed more than 100,000 positive reviews.
The sequel in question, aptly named My Winter Car, pretends to offer the same deal but quietly makes it worse by burying you under snow, darkness, and temperatures that can kill you before the engine ever turns over.
My Winter Car explodes on Steam hours after launch
Despite being openly hostile to newcomers, My Winter Car surged past 21,000 concurrent players within hours of launching on Steam. The game also picked up more than 1,000 positive reviews just four hours after release.
That is a staggering jump for a sequel that actively warns players not to ouch it unless they already survived the original.
The spike suggests something rare is happening and it appears to be driven largely by word of mouth. There is already heavy excitement around the 1990s car survival sequel on Reddit, and some reviews even admit to “not having played enough to give [their] opinions,” but leaving positive feedback to boost the game’s reach anyway.
Other early Steam reviews lean into the suffering without apology. One player wrote, “THIS IS A MOMENT IN HISTORY… bout damn time topples! cant wait to freeze my balls off!” Another recounts scraping ice, warming the car, crashing into a tree, and dying instantly after forgetting a seatbelt, which is exactly why they called it a 10/10 experience.
Instead of chasing a bigger audience by appealing to the masses, My Winter Car trusts that the right one will always find it, even if they freeze trying.
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