Go Just About as Retro as You Can Go With 4-Color Taxi

Shadowbrain’s 4-Color Taxi, out now on mobile and PCs, goes just about as low tech as you can without cloning Atari’s Night Driver or Exidy’s Death Race.

Designed around a four-color palette, the game emulates the look of a game on the original GameBoy (although it cheats a bit on the resolution). It’s a no-frills top-down experience where a player delivers taxi passengers to their vaguely-described destinations as quickly as possible. Think Crazy Taxi if it had been made way before its time.

But it also manages to look like frantic fun, proving it’s not fancy graphics and weather effects that make a car game good. The game has 20 levels and features no in-app purchases. It’s out for Android, Windows Phone, Ouya, PC, Mac and Linux.