Forum Overview :: What Are You Playing Right Now?
 
UPDATE (10 hours): This game rips. by Fullofkittens Yesterday, 6:44am PST
It seems like everybody knew about this game already so I apologize about supplying old news but it's new to me!

The person that responded upthread was absolutely correct: this is a cozy game for synthesizer dads.

Here is the game loop:

  1. Spend 10 minutes fucking around with your car.

  2. Look at a map and plan a route for your next drive.

  3. Go for a drive inside a beautiful Simon Stålenhag book for 15-20 minutes. Avoid various menacing but awesome-looking environmental hazards. Go into people's abandoned houses and take everything that isn't nailed down. Chop apart wrecked cars with a giant Sawzall. Take photographs of weird shit which puts entries into your log book ^___^ .

  4. When the environment starts getting too spooky, go find a "stability core" which is a pretty lava lamp sitting on a "gate" which is literally directly an object from Tales from the Loop. Pull the core off the gate. Whoops! This decreases the stability of the area, which may lead to a bunch of silent mannequins appearing around you, or an earthquake punting your car into the forest.

  5. On your little map, select an exit portal. You probably want to plan a route to the exit portal before selecting it.

  6. Selecting an exit portal has two effects: it deep-sixes what stability remains in the areas and everything descends into chaos, and it creates a beautiful synthwave album cover in the distance with a neon pillar reaching up into the sky. You now have to drive into that pillar of light to survive, in a couple of minutes this area is going to de-rez or whatever.

  7. Driving into the pillar teleports you back to the garage.

  8. Spend 10 minutes fucking around with your car.

Fullofkittens wrote:



The DLCs are also all, like, skins for the car, which seems a little pointless since there's no third-person camera so you can only see the outside of the car when you're not driving it.


I was quite wrong about this! For one thing, you spend half the game outside the car running around scavenging for things and then you come back to your car which is now in a beautiful tableau with your station wagon amid the awesome scenery. For another, the customizations extend to the inside of the car: I currently have a little bobblehead of an astronaut dog on my dashboard and my gear shifter is a Saturn that glows in the dark! Also my car is covered in glow-in-the-dark space stickers and it looks rad as hell.

If you are a person that has ever taken a screenshot in Minecraft just because it looked cool, this game is for you.

Whether this game turns out to be fun hinges entirely on whether the missions are exciting and I haven't done one yet BECAUSE: it doesn't have save-anywhere. Once you start a mission you are in for the whole mission (20+ minutes) and there is a penalty for bailing early. For that reason alone this is automatically a negative review for Caltrops purposes even if I end up liking the game because I know ICJ in particular considers that a dealbreaker.


The missions are exciting and the lack of save-anywhere is, fortunately or not, a core mechanic, because when you go out on these drives it's meant to feel like a sortie out into a dangerous environment and you have to be quick and resourceful to make it back alive. The fact that starting a mission puts you out of safety and you are now feeling a little desperate to get back to safety is what makes it exciting.

Exit portal on a hill, shit tires wrote:

The RNG with the exit portals made me rage quit.


The levels are somewhat(?) procedurally generated so it is definitely possible to get fucked by the RNG. I have found that hitting Load Game drops you back at the beginning of a map with the RNG regenerated, and I have had to resort to this a couple of times so far to get back alive. If you have bad tires, though, that's on you.
PREVIOUS REPLY QUOTE
 
Pacific Drive aka The Simon Stålenhag Picture Book Lookalike Game by Fullofkittens 01/02/2025, 7:07am PST NEW
    The ultimate DAD game, starring the Griswold family truckster by Clark Griswold 01/03/2025, 2:40am PST NEW
        I died immediately on my first run, I have no idea wtf I'm doing NT by Fullofkittens 01/03/2025, 6:30am PST NEW
    I wanted to like this, but the writing just didn't work for me. by blackwater 01/03/2025, 3:45pm PST NEW
        It's no ordinary station wagon, it's an ANOMALY. by Fullofkittens 01/04/2025, 5:24am PST NEW
            It was fine on the 2nd run, I thought the time limit was much shorter. NT by Fullofkittens 01/04/2025, 9:56am PST NEW
    The RNG with the exit portals made me rage quit NT by Exit portal on a hill, shit tires 01/04/2025, 7:32pm PST NEW
    UPDATE (10 hours): This game rips. by Fullofkittens Yesterday, 6:44am PST NEW
 
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