To survive in looter-booter Pacific Drive you have to keep the paranormal station wagon you drive around in good nick. You're constantly repairing corroded doors and swapping out busted engine parts with cobbled-together technology. But maybe this tinkering was a little too much. Our review praised the game for its "trunk loads of atmosphere" but called the constant need to craft stuff "laborious". If you also felt this, then good news. An update now lets you fiddle the difficulty options a generous amount, say developers Ironwood Studios, making the game easier and bringing crafting needs right down.
Buuut... if you thought the opposite - that the game wasn't hard enough - you can now tick a box that makes hitting yourself with the trunk door kill you stone dead.
]]>Station wagon survival 'em up Pacific Drive has received a summer update which adds a photomode, new upgrades for garage machinery, a new sideways dodge manouver for the car, and a piece of paid cosmetic DLC. This is the first of a new roadmap of post-release updates still to come.
]]>Playing Pacific Drive reminds me of an army recruitment advert shown on British TV about 20 years ago. A group of soldiers are travelling along a road at night in a Land Rover, when suddenly they spot the enemy ahead. The front seat passenger starts barking orders at the driver: “Get off the road! Kill the lights! Through the trees!”. You sense the panic as the camera, inside the vehicle, jolts with the suspension on the rough ground, and the driver fights the steering wheel to stay in control. It’s a scene you reenact quite frequently in Ironwood’s survival game with roguelike trimmings. Well, except, instead of a Land Rover you’re behind the wheel of a rusty station wagon, and instead of military opposition, you’re scarpering from paranormal phenomena.
]]>February's Steam Next Fest demo bonanza officially concluded on Monday, and Valve have now revealed the 50 most played games you all tucked into across the week-long event. Ordered by the number of unique players that spent time with them during Next Fest proper (meaning all those early demo plays from earlier in the month haven't been counted), the most popular game of the lot was one that was only formally announced right at the end of January. So congratulations Dungeonborne - your blend of PvPvE dungeon crawling and fantasy skelly monsters clearly struck a chord with this year's Next Festers.
]]>I've long been enamoured with the landscape of the Pacific Northwest, from the Douglas firs and waterfalls of Twin Peaks to the redwoods I once swam beneath on a road trip. Thanks to Pacific Drive's Steam Next Fest demo, I have now also barrelled through the woods and backroads of a spooky alt-history PNW in a banged-up car which is itself a S.T.A.L.K.E.R.-esque artifact. I've had my eye on Pacific Drive for a few years and after playing the demo, I am delighted by parts of it but not entirely sold on its roguelikelike survival scavenge-o-rama structure. Hmm! Give it a go and tell me what you think.
]]>Happy New Year, folks! Have you recovered from the all the 100+ hour RPGs that came out last year? Well, I have good news and bad news for you. The good news is that everyone seems to be taking a bit of a breather in 2024, because (at time of writing at least) the official "big'uns" calendar is looking remarkably slim at the moment. There are still some heavy-hitters coming our way this year, such as Avowed, Star Wars Outlaws and Path Of Exile 2, but 2024 looks like another year where it will be the smaller, independent games that shine the brightest. They certainly make up the bulk of our most anticipated games list for 2024, which the RPS Treehouse has been feverishly putting together over the last few days. The bad news is that there are still loads of great games coming out. So come, join us, and see what's on our personal wishlists for 2024.
]]>I don't drive myself, and while that's mostly because I can't afford a car, don't really need one for work and have wibbly environmentalist sensibilities, it's also because the experience of driving, for me, has been thoroughly spoiled by videogames. I mean, just look at this trailer for Ironwood's Vandemeerian vehicle survival roguelike Pacific Drive. How am I supposed to be satisfied with some stupid road after watching that? What's the point of cars if there are no floating cryptid lifeforms, inexplicable walls of energy or lost research facilities involved?
]]>It's episode seven of Indiescovery and this week, wow, the gang is tired. With a busy four days in Boston for PAX East, mine and Liam's brains were basically mush last week, so Rebecca - an absolute angel - graciously said she could host a special PAX East episode where she chats with Liam and me about the indies we saw on the show floor and try desperately to string together a coherent sentence. She also made bulletpoints of our entire chat so writing up the shownotes would be easier; we do not deserve her.
]]>When Pacific Drive was first announced during one of Sony's State Of Play streams a couple of months ago, my initial thoughts were, 'Hey, that spooky first-person driving game has some cool sci-fi vibes about it that makes it look like Control on wheels,' and, 'Man, I want to find out more immediately.' Well, thanks to a recent press presentation, I have found out more about Ironwood Studio's survival roadtrip game, and it's a lot more roguelike-y than I was expecting. Here's everything I learned.
]]>Every weekend, indie devs show off current work on Twitter's #screenshotsaturday tag. And every Monday, I bring you a selection of these snaps and clips. This week, my eye has been caught by extremely athletic handwashing, handpainted art, a cute witch, and more. Come see!
]]>If you’ve ever thought you spotted something weird while driving through creepy woodland at night then you’ll probably be up for Ironwood Studios’ debut Pacific Drive, due out in 2023. It’s a first-person “road-lite” survival game that puts you behind the wheel of a customisable station wagon deep in a locked-down military test zone full of mad science. Gaze at that homely wood-panelling as you watch the trailer below.
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