My Winter Car is a 'dangerous, depressing and tiring' life sim, and the developer doesn't want you to play it unless you've mastered the infamously tricky My Summer Car

It's only been a year since Amistech released its notoriously challenging Finnish life sim, My Summer Car. After nearly a decade of early access, it finally hit 1.0 in January 2025. Amistech hasn't been resting on its laurels since then, though. While PC Gamer was taking its big holiday nap, My Winter Car launched in early access.

Videogame sequels usually come with the caveat that it's totally OK to skip the original. Even if doing so actually seems a bit absurd, like a direct follow-up to a story-driven RPG. It makes sense: devs don't want to give people too many reasons not to pick up their new game.

But My Winter Car is a sequel to a game that was specifically advertised as "not fun". It's not going for mass appeal. Instead of the challenge level starting from scratch, it's meant to build on the trials and tribulations you faced in the original game.

It features "added challenge for those who can master the original game," the Steam page warns. Given the complexity of My Summer Car, this means you're probably going to have an absolutely horrible time, which for games like this is absolutely a selling point.

Ultimately this is still a game about fixing up an old project car, maybe to race, or perhaps just to show off. Now, I don't own a car, but movies have taught me that American teenagers are constantly fixing up old bangers, a process that usually ends with both a functioning car and a stronger relationship with their distant father. It sounds easy and rewarding.

But My Winter Car is not American. It's Finnish. This is not an easy game about bonding with a parent, then, but a survival game that wants to kill you.

So, along with fiddling with 200 unique parts to create your perfect project car, you'll need to deal with the threat of permadeath, foul weather and cops. "Even with all the fun and interesting things," Amistech says, "there is still terrible coldness and darkness of Finnish winter that makes the life dangerous, depressing and tiring".

This brutal, meticulous life sim might be too daunting for some, but there's no dearth of people up for the challenge of putting together a car in deeply unpleasant conditions. My Winter Car hit early access on December 29, and it's already spawned nearly 5,000 reviews, leaving it with an impressive Overwhelmingly Positive rating on Steam.

I will probably never play My Winter Car. I'm built for pleasure. But I'm absolutely going to foist it upon a colleague so we can have a proper dig into it soon.