I just hope the purity of the driving remains the priority, rather than the survival elements because we have enough of those games on PC already. But the bones of something really interesting are here, and I’m intrigued to see how the developer builds on them. The Long Drive has a long way to go, and games like Jalopy offer a similar, but the more fully-formed experience. But if you badly damage your car out here, or run out of fuel, you’ll have a hard time making it back to the road. There are dusty highways to follow, lined with electricity poles, or you can go off-road into the infinite desert where you’ll find strange rock formations and towering mesas. You can even yank bits off other cars and attach them to your own, and as you play your vehicle slowly becomes a Frankenstein’s monster of mismatched parts. When you’re low on fuel and crawling along on your starter motor, seeing the shape of a building in the distance is a relief. Stick to the roads and you’ll sometimes run across an old deserted house or a roadside gas station, in which you can scavenge for new car parts, fuel, and other survival supplies. Especially when the sun starts to set, draping the wasteland in burning red light and long shadows. The almost minimalist aesthetic of the desert, and the deafening silence except for the howl of the wind, are surprisingly atmospheric. The Long Drive scratches the same itch, and I find cruising along those lonely highways an enjoyable way to spend 30-40 meditative minutes.
One of my favorite things to do in open-world games is take a car and aimlessly driving around the map enjoying the scenery. I love driving long distances in silence. But the game’s survival systems aren’t completely in place yet, so a lot of this is just role-playing at the moment anyway. I keep dropping stuff or pulling the doors off my car. I like how this preparation stage gives you a sense of embarking on an exciting, dangerous road trip, Controls need some work and refinement. You can top up your gas tank and pack the trunk with water because you’re gonna need to stay hydrated in a desert.
Start a new game and you’ll start from your garage, getting ready for your trip into the desert.
It’s still in development, so there isn’t much to do but drive, but there’s something hypnotic about this never-ending, sandy wasteland road trip. The Long Drive is a bare-bones but compelling Early Access driving sim set in an extensive procedurally generated desert.
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