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Summit Drive
Genre: Driving / Adventure
Platform: PC Windows
Role: Game Developer / Designer
This game was submitted to the IndieCade Festival 2025
Summit Drive is a driving game where you play as an anthropomorphic bird who must make their way up to the mountain summit for a view like none other. It blends the mechanical absurdity of Enviro-bear 2000’s controls with A Short Hike’s cozy, quirky aesthetic. The game explores the fear of driving and falling, blending them into a metaphor for life.
Unique Selling Point
What makes Summit Drive’s design so unique is how it steers away from the typical WASD controls that many car games utilize. It focuses all of its driving mechanics on only using the mouse. As the player, you'll control the character's hand, moving it like a cursor to grab the steering wheel or interact with other things inside the car. While the goal of reaching the top may seem simple, the unique controls combined with the terrain, creates a painful experience. The game creates a contrast between its warmer toned, cozy appearance and its true brutal nature, showing players that this isn’t your average driving game. The bird in this game serves as a mechanism for both humor and annoyance to the player, as they fail multiple times while driving up. It reacts and emits a sound with each fall, expressing frustration to players, while its silliness adds to the humor.
Design Intention
The game was designed to explore the phenomenon of failure in games in order to prove how important it is for the feeling of success. Summit Drive aims to compare failure in games with failure in life, and how these flaws can act as bridge pieces to finding our greatest achievements. Each piece becomes a testament to resilience, allowing players to embrace the journey ahead. For many players, we enjoy challenges. Especially in the context of gaming, challenge encourages us to complete a goal. There will always be room for challenge. Even if the challenge is to make it to the top of the mountain summit, there is no real explanation to what is at the summit. This secret will remain hidden until players uncover it themselves. Meanwhile, the aesthetic choices, mechanics, and terrain are deliberately designed to subtly guide their focus, elevating the mystery of the goal.
I designed this game with that purpose in mind. Summit Drive explores the emotional challenges players face when tackling a rage-inducing game. I developed this game to explore the ”why” in which we as players play these kinds of games. What is the essence or drive that keeps us going? Is it the promise of a reward at the end? Is it the anticipation of achievement or the greatness of the goal? Whatever it is that drives us, Summit Drive channels that drive into the chaotic ascent.
Genre: Driving / Adventure
Platform: PC Windows
Role: Game Developer / Designer
This game was submitted to the IndieCade Festival 2025
Summit Drive is a driving game where you play as an anthropomorphic bird who must make their way up to the mountain summit for a view like none other. It blends the mechanical absurdity of Enviro-bear 2000’s controls with A Short Hike’s cozy, quirky aesthetic. The game explores the fear of driving and falling, blending them into a metaphor for life.
Unique Selling Point
What makes Summit Drive’s design so unique is how it steers away from the typical WASD controls that many car games utilize. It focuses all of its driving mechanics on only using the mouse. As the player, you'll control the character's hand, moving it like a cursor to grab the steering wheel or interact with other things inside the car. While the goal of reaching the top may seem simple, the unique controls combined with the terrain, creates a painful experience. The game creates a contrast between its warmer toned, cozy appearance and its true brutal nature, showing players that this isn’t your average driving game. The bird in this game serves as a mechanism for both humor and annoyance to the player, as they fail multiple times while driving up. It reacts and emits a sound with each fall, expressing frustration to players, while its silliness adds to the humor.
Design Intention
The game was designed to explore the phenomenon of failure in games in order to prove how important it is for the feeling of success. Summit Drive aims to compare failure in games with failure in life, and how these flaws can act as bridge pieces to finding our greatest achievements. Each piece becomes a testament to resilience, allowing players to embrace the journey ahead. For many players, we enjoy challenges. Especially in the context of gaming, challenge encourages us to complete a goal. There will always be room for challenge. Even if the challenge is to make it to the top of the mountain summit, there is no real explanation to what is at the summit. This secret will remain hidden until players uncover it themselves. Meanwhile, the aesthetic choices, mechanics, and terrain are deliberately designed to subtly guide their focus, elevating the mystery of the goal.
I designed this game with that purpose in mind. Summit Drive explores the emotional challenges players face when tackling a rage-inducing game. I developed this game to explore the ”why” in which we as players play these kinds of games. What is the essence or drive that keeps us going? Is it the promise of a reward at the end? Is it the anticipation of achievement or the greatness of the goal? Whatever it is that drives us, Summit Drive channels that drive into the chaotic ascent.