$24.99OHV Restore a rusty car, live slow
Fix up an old car in 90s rural Poland, then grow tomatoes, weld a buggy and take on odd jobs in a village that runs at its own pace.
Is OHV worth it?
OHV is worth it if…
- you grew up around 90s Eastern Europe and want that world back, potholes and all
- you like slow, hands-on projects: sanding, painting and tuning a car over many evenings
- you enjoy juggling odd jobs, from coal deliveries to questionable garden raids
- you want a game to unwind with, where nothing rushes you and the radio does the talking
Screenshots
Rust, paint and the car that starts it all
The OHV is your project and your pride. You buy one cheap, strip off the rust and dirt, then decide how it should look: paint it by hand with a brush, tune it, and join the Automobilklub to show it off. The bodywork takes patience, and that is the point. There is a real pleasure in rolling a freshly painted car out of the garage into the evening light. A side quest chain can also earn you a Kredens, a second car for the collection. Fair warning: the game is in Early Access and bugs are part of the deal right now, so save often.
A garage, a buggy and honest work
You build your own garage from the ground up, then turn to the fun part: a buggy of your own design. Cut and weld pipes into any shape you like, then take it racing for trophies. Money comes from work, not luck. You haul coal in the SMAR truck, run your daily errands in the Odra, and spend the evenings on country life: making sausage, pickling cucumbers, pumping iron in the basement gym and entering weight lifting contests. If that sounds too law-abiding, there are allotment gardens to rob and catalytic converters to cut off. The 90s were a flexible decade.
What is there to do besides cars?
Can you play it solo?
Yes, it is a singleplayer game at heart, and it suits playing alone. The days fill up with small projects: building the garage piece by piece, welding the next buggy frame, lifting in the basement, putting up jars of pickles. There is also a multiplayer mode if you would rather share the chaos with a friend.
What is the music and atmosphere like?
The soundtrack is original and made for the setting: Polish synthpop, Berlin-style techno and the other sounds of the era, played over Eurodance-flavoured radio. The radio even has its own programmes with amateurishly recorded adverts, the kind you can still hear on local stations today. Combined with the potholed roads and empty countryside, it does a lot of the atmosphere work.
How hard is the car building?
Simpler than in the games that inspired the genre. You will not spend hours lost in a parts catalogue: the OHV is about stripping, painting and cosmetic tuning rather than deep mechanical work. The buggy building is more freeform, since you cut and weld pipes however you like. The fiddly part is the bodywork, where painting with a brush takes a steady hand.
Is it finished?
No, it is in Early Access, made by one developer, and it shows. Bugs come and go with updates, and some players find them frequent enough to interrupt long projects. If you pick it up now, treat it as a game still under construction: enjoyable, atmospheric and rough around the edges. Waiting for more polish is a reasonable choice too.
