Game Reviews

Does not Commute

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Does not Commute
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Does not Commute is a strange one. It's a mix of genres held together with a strange story about time travel and driverless cars and a man who's obsessed with Yorkshire Terriers.

And it works. At least it does most of the time. It can be a bit frustrating when you mess up and run out of time, but there's enough wit here that you'll want to see it through to the end.

Right turn Clyde

Essentially the game is about controlling rush hour. Except you control it in increments. You'll drive your first car through empty streets, adding more traffic with each slice of the game until there are 15 vehicles vying for space.

Your cars accelerate automatically, and you tap on the left or right of the screen to move them in that direction. There are orange glowing numbers scattered around the levels and picking these up gives you a few extra seconds. Run out of time and it's game over.

Each new journey is accompanied by a little snippet of text. These range from the bizarre to the laugh-out-loud hilarious. The first time you get to drive a boat in particular had me in stitches.

There's frustration as well as fun here though. Does not Commute is a tricky game, and often you're trying to shave seconds off your time just so you can see the next chunk of the game.

There are boosts to help you in this endeavour. One speeds up a car, another locks it tighter to the road. A third adds armour to your vehicle, which is handy because you're going to smash into a lot of things.

You can rewind runs that go awry, but you'll lose a second every time you do, and that can mean the difference between success and failure.

Car wars

The bits of Does not Commute don't quite gel in the way you want them to, but that's not to say it isn't worthy of some attention.

There's a neat bounce to everything, and the story is entertaining enough that you'll want to stick with it. Plus that boat joke is just spot on.

Does not Commute

A clever and endearing mashing up of genres and styles, Does not Commute doesn't always work, but when it clicks it's pretty special
Score
Harry Slater
Harry Slater
Harry used to be really good at Snake on the Nokia 5110. Apparently though, digital snake wrangling isn't a proper job, so now he writes words about games instead.