Pacific Drive
Pacific Drive is a first-person driving survival game with your car as your only companion. Navigate a surreal reimagining of the Pacific Northwest, and face supernatural dangers as you venture into the Olympic Exclusion Zone. Each excursion into the wilderness brings unique and strange challenges as you restore and upgrade your car from an abandoned garage that acts as your home base. Gather precious resources and investigate what’s been left behind in the Zone; unravel a long-forgotten mystery while learning exactly what it takes to survive in this unpredictable, hostile environment.
Features
- Outrun the storm while facing strange perils in a world that shifts with every journey into the Zone
- Your car, your way – scavenge resources to craft new equipment and configure your wagon how you want. Experiment with different mods and car parts to navigate a treacherous landscape, and look good doing it
- Unravel the mystery of the Olympic Exclusion Zone, an abandoned research site in an anomaly-filled version of the Pacific Northwest
- Original score by Wilbert Roget, II and featuring 20+ licensed songs
DRIVE TO SURVIVE
It’s you and your station wagon against an unforgiving, vicious world. It’ll take more than a fresh set of tires to keep you alive, on and off the road. Your faithful wagon can be upgraded and reinforced to protect you, but the car is going to take a beating. Keep your gas tank filled and your panels intact to withstand the radiation permeating the Zone. You’ll be pushed to your limit – making repairs on the fly, scavenging materials wherever you can, and adapting your rolling fortress to tackle the many life-threatening dangers that lurk in the shadows.
INVESTIGATE THE ZONE
The experimental leftovers of the secretive ARDA organization remain scattered across the Zone, and finding answers won’t be easy. Everywhere you look you’ll find anomalies, surreal forces of a twisted nature that make your journey more difficult… or more interesting. Silhouettes in the dark, rolling piles of scrap metal, and towering pillars of earth – each trip is packed with otherworldly hazards. As terrifying as those may be, nothing compares to the overwhelming power of a Zone Storm. Stomp on the gas and outrun it if you can – these rolling maelstroms rend the landscape and obliterate anything that sticks around too long. Don’t let that be you.
REPEAT
Check the map, pack some gear for the trip, and hit the road. Gather resources and collect data as you go, there’s all sorts of useful stuff inside the walls of the Zone. Make it back safely and use the contents of your trunk to improve your car and garage. Every time you venture out, new trials await: bizarre weather, unforgiving landscapes, and experimental remnants. The golden rule in the Zone is ‘nothing ventured, nothing gained’ — some materials can only be found in the most dangerous places. Be smart out there, and don’t waste time — it’s going to be a long haul.
Steam User 1183
First impressions are very positive. The biggest thing for me is how super atmospheric and immersive the game is. The main gameplay loop is entertaining, I like the inventory and looting systems, they remind me a lot of Escape from Tarkov. The environments all look very beautiful and detailed, and driving through them is wonderful. However, I do have one issue with this game; PLEASE LET US CLOSE THE GARAGE DOOR WHEN ITS STORMING OUT PLEASEEEEE!!! IT WOULD BE SO COZY PLEASEEEEE!!!!
Edit: THEY MADE THE DOOR CLOSEABLE HELL YEAH!
Steam User 308
I really enjoyed playing through this game. i like driving in my car, collecting resources, repairing my car, and then preparing for my next "road trip"..i do not like doing these things in real life.
Steam User 564
Seems really good so far, fun and very interesting.
2 things though that I'd have to agree on with some other comments down here:
1. We need more available save options
2. Please, for the love of god, let us close the garage door. Amen
Steam User 339
This game is fantastic.
Pacific Drive has been described as "S.T.A.L.K.E.R. is happening in the Pacific Northwest and all you have is a car". However, the gameplay loop feels more like Subnautica. There are no classical enemies, no combat -- every threat is environmental; you are trapped in a part of the world being overrun by Anomolies, many of which are mobile and almost all are dangerous. Hailing from your garage in a small pocket of peace, you forage out deeper and deeper into increasingly dangerous zones, driven by the plot and a desire for more difficult-to-obtain resources.
The game is insanely atmospheric, and as immersive as you could ask for. Every element, from graphics to sound design to environment building, is crafted to evoke the experience that is Pacific Drive. Especially the music. I have not fallen in love with a soundtrack like I have the one on this game's radio in ages. I've added music from Pacific Drive to my playlist so I can listen to it when not playing the game.
I was not expecting the game to be so intense. You can never return the way you came, so the only way back to your safe base is by generating a portal. Doing so requires collecting enough of your zone's energy and triggering the portal with a device that only works at a distance. The moment you do, the zone begins to collapse rapidly around you, prompting a mad dash to reach the portal. Deeper zones require more unstable energy types which in turn require opening the portal from farther away. Making those mad dashes progressively longer, through more dangerous territory with a more oppressive ticking clock.
The zones are hand-crafted, but hazards and resources are randomly generated, as is your entry and exit points, allowing you to explore almost-familiar areas repeatedly while never knowing just what you will find or experience.
The plot is thin but solid, sold by excellent voice acting (including a character who will never not sound like Captain Janeway to me). The lore you can scrounge up is fun, especially the multi-part documentary you can round up the pieces of, giving some great history and an outsider's impression of a situation you are far more familiar with. The decision to make the car, the center of your experience, basically an SCP, allows a lot of game mechanics (like what happens if you die) to be rooted directly into the story rather than require player departmentalization.
Praise to the developers for many extremely good mechanical decisions. First and foremost, for me, was their attention to the needs of gamers who suffer motion sickness. There are multiple settings to eliminate (or at least minimize) issues.
Beyond that, the game has a large number of settings that allow you to customize your gameplay experience, tailoring Pacific Drive. I love that you can adjust your QoL in this game, allowing or disabling things like swapping parts with a part you are holding, or how long you have to hold the key to turn the ignition. Additionally, you can adjust elements which may alter the difficulty, but make the game far more enjoyable depending on your playstyle. (Halfway through the game, I turned off the non-gateway-related zone timer so that I could spend my time immersing myself in exploration without feeling pushed to speedrun each zone.) And major kudos for none of these adjustments disabling achievements. I, for one, don't care about achievements; but it never sits well when a game tries to punish you for playing your way. Pacific Drive never does that.
Some of the additional touches just made my day. Like representative car stickers being included for free, or the decal set you can find which decorates your car in the style of the Scoobie Doo Mystery Machine.
As for the bad, there is so very little that the flaws barely detract from enjoying Pacific Drive. In over 90 hours of gameplay, I experienced only two bugs. The first, getting stuck in a submenu, was a minor annoyance that was solved by navigating to another part of the menu rather than trying to close the menus directly. The second was considerably more problematic: sometimes, upon loading a save, the zone graphically glitched. I had to reload several times on multiple occasions, but the game always eventually loaded properly.
In addition to these two bugs, there are two design features that I did not appreciate. No, this isn't a rant about being unable to save while on a run. I understand how problematic that can be for many. But I also understand the developer's decision and appreciate the feeling of threat added by not being able to save-scum anything out there. I adjusted my settings to allow pausing, and that took care of any issues I personally had with RL interruptions.
Rather, the two issues are these: most of the late game equipment requires a large amount of a resource called Olympian Fragments which are exceptionally rare and in areas you cannot farm conveniently. Thankfully, you need none of that equipment to successfully get through the end of the game. Which is fortunate because you will have virtually none of it. The other issue I had was that cosmetics -- paint and decals -- have limited use. Which means if you find a design for your car that you fall in love with, you won't be able to keep it when parts start wearing out unless the RNG is kind.
But like I said, these things are not enough to sour the game. Not even a little.
I have driven all the way to the end. And now I'm free-roaming the area. Just for a little bit longer. I'm not ready to leave yet.
Steam User 403
If you like rain, anomalies, no jump scares, and trying to complete objectives while listening to great sound track. This is your game.
Steam User 853
you can slam the trunk on your head
Steam User 598
Options -> Difficulty -> Save loot on death -> Esc -> Abandon Run -> Autosave