HorrorDriven: A story for the road

Halfway between Pacific Drive and Amnesia the Dark Descent, HorrorDriven is a very interesting story-driven horror game that heavily relies on exploration, crafting and survival mechanics. Far from being your typical walking simulator, you will often need to stray away from the path to find what you need to survive. Beware though, if the road may seem rather empty at first, you are definitely not alone. The world of HorrorDriven shines through its oppressive atmosphere and his story full of mysteries, kinda reminiscing of the Silent Hill games.
Because I gave the creator of the game interesting feedback on the demo, he offered me the opportunity to try the whole game in exchange of a bit more feedback. The demo really picked my interest, so I accepted his offer, but I wouldn't say I'm biased.
I had a great time exploring the game (twice, actually), and I really loved this feeling of hopelessness and distress the game distills throughout the adventure.
On the technical side of things, the game ran very well on my laptop (5800h/3070), and pretty well also on my Deck, as long as I didn't push too hard on the settings. I did one full playthrough on each device, and I didn't encounter any real issue. Nothing to break my immersion at least.
In the end, I really hope HorrorDriven's creator will continue creating games, as I consider this first project already very impressive for a solo dev.

I remember watching tomato gaming stream this on his twitch channel when playing the beta and I've wanted to play it ever since. I love this game its great, having fun so far.

HorrorDriven is Pacific Drive without the Pacific; a terrifying horror experience that will make you jump, run and hide from your worst nightmares, while trying to maintain your car intact and running.
The game runs fine on Steam Deck, and although I wished the initial area was shorter, (game has received updates since my review), I absolutely recommend you to try it.
If you want to check it for yourself, press the link below:

Horrordriven is an actual horror game that is bit Penumbra-like minus physics, with nifty car attached to it, sprinkled with decent survival mechanics and ways to deal with threats in game.
I wrote actual horror game, because it doesn't just resemble a walking-sim with jumpscares, there ARE actually things here to kill you and punish you for being too reckless, your mushroom picking in forest can be interrupted by unwelcome dookie monster, is nice.
It has randomly assigned layouts for the map that is tad Darkwood'ish, points of intrests you go through are pre-made, there is just randomization here and there, like different items given.
In fact progression also works that way, explore map, check thing, need thing, fulfill objective when enough information is provided... While you of course watch out for monstie monsters.
What is unique to this game is CAR and i like CAR, game is build around it, driving is actually hella fun, it is here to help but it isn't a safehouse kinda and isn't pain in ass, exploration road part actually matters, also i think this is one of the games that has best working exploration in general, having more scribbles on map means easier way to navigate, you have tools to navigate, you are rewarded for reading stuff correctly and if you don't you have sense of "Where the fuck i'm?".
And now we come to TRUE horror of this game... It's pretty forgiving, i died maybe once with monsters set on hard, they are persistent and difficult, until you get loads of stuff to stay safe, if you get damaged? Don't worry crafting table gives you... 3x medkits per craft, not 1 and not including ones you might get from chests and cabinets! Later on my loot goblin inside me was screaming because i had both inventory on car and me filled up, it were truely trecherous times, i had to remove 5x medkits, it had to be done, they are useful but i was not using them, i already figured out how monsters kind of worked and... I will spare you details, i believe couple systems, like enviroment hazards and statuses could be more kick in balls like.
It's still a really great game but underrated, i recommend it fully without worry, story and mystery is there, it has it's own ideas and areas that bring tension, it takes good inspiration from other games, it is fun to playthrough and if it's possible i will be doing car-less one next time i play this game, i feel sad that other "horror" games got crazy popular but not this one.

Game is decent, has some good atmosphere and a somewhat solid gameplay loop but it gets repetitive and once you've completed the first 2 areas you pretty much played the game entirely as far as said gameplay loop is concerned.

Main gameplay is basically a pseudo survival-crafting with an objective and the car as your main storage, funny enough though you'll be running around more often than driving. Car is urged to not go into the forests and stay on the roads or else it'll get warped back onto the roads, but all the loot is off the road and requires you to run around the forest trying to find it to begin with, relying on your compass and directions to get around. Avoid the monsters as they show, loot the place for what you can find and need, move on to doing the objective when ready.

However it gets repetitive very fast with no mix up besides objective areas, from area 1 to finale you'll be tackling the same randomly generates houses for the same generic loot, start to finish. Well what about the enemies? Nope, you get the same exact 2 types of guys the entire game save for 2 specific water encounters with a fish monster. There is an anomaly type in the game later (of which there isnt many anomalies) that applies a unique status effect where a new enemy will eventually pop up and you have to run, but its easily dealt with because the escape method spawns close and you solve it by doing the same thing you do with all other enemies : running.

Atmosphere is decent, gets a bit samey but for what it's worth I liked alot of what was going on, especially with stuff like the radio. The random jumpscares that can pop up while you're rummaging around the place were lame IMO though, not even scary just.. there.

Sound design is alright, meh and great with varying levels depending on the area and circumstances.

Music is passable, can't really give a strong opinion on it.

Story is intriguing at first, there's a lot of mystery and once you hit the 2nd area and figure out about how the soul light lanterns change the notes around you, it can get even more interesting, I wish the game abused this feature more. However, especially considering the soul light lanterns changing stuff to begin with, the story starts to get extremely predictable and I figured out what the 'twist' was gonna be very quickly, before the game ever bothered to try telling me directly.

I did encounter some strange issues or bugs, namely with world gen's ground collision, which thankfully fixes itself when reloading the save.


It's an alright game, 6/10 maybe 6.5/10. I wouldn't say it's some fantastic great thing but for what it's worth, it did a decent job of keeping me entertained for several hours.

To start, I greatly enjoyed my time playing through HorrorDriven. I see the game as a nice blend of S.T.A.L.K.E.R./Roadside Picnic with more supernatural cosmic horror elements ingrained into it. The game offers several "sectors", or different maps, that you'll explore throughout the game. Each sector offers different objectives to complete, areas to loot, monsters to avoid, and scares to encounter.
The game also boasts a decent upgrade skill tree. Without getting into spoilers, you will need to do some exploring and lore building if you want to obtain new crafting recipes, skills, and materials that you'll need in order to further progress in the game. I will advise though, the game can be pretty unforgiving. There is a definite learning curve for managing health, hunger, and heat while also gathering resources needed to survive, to upgrade, and to progress.
My main issues with the game are relatively minor: I got lost several times trying to find the next objective, though a lot of it came down to not properly using a compass or resources at my disposal. I also managed to step in every single bear-trap in the game, which annoyed me greatly.
If you're wanting to try a simplified, horror version of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. or a more walking-based Pacific Drive (nevermind this game predates it by quite a bit), then you will likely enjoy HorrorDriven.

Game's been a blast so far. HorrorDriven got a great balance of both survival and horror elements for fans of both genres to enjoy. I'm personally more into the survival genre and have a bit of a struggle with horror games, so it has been a bit of a struggle, at times. But, aside my frights, the survival elements has paid it off for me and I strongly do recommend it for that alone.
Great work, look forward for more in the future.