A new trailer has been released for "Road-Lite" driving survival game Pacific Drive, showcasing the strange game's car upgrade, salvaging, and exploration gameplay. PlayStation announced a surprise series of reveals planned for Thursday at the last minute, dropping trailers for indie games including PixelJunk Scrappers Deluxe, Animal Well, and Eternights. Pacific Drive was the final game showcased, stealing the show with its intense supernatural station wagon action.Pacific Drive was first announced in September 2022 as a PlayStation indie showcase. It's being developed by the team at Ironwood Studios, which will be its first project. The Seattle-based studio is made up of developers with experience working at Sucker Punch, Microsoft, Klei, Oculus, and Riot Games – a group of talented veterans. That first Pacific Drive trailer presented a dark and mysterious project with intense driving sequences mixed with supernatural tension. But the latest look at Pacific Drive is quite a bit different.In the new trailer for Pacific Drive, a lot of attention is paid to the game's vehicle of choice. Players will be driving a station wagon, which at first is beat up and run down but that is upgraded to be nearly a tank over the course of the game. What stands out about the trailer is that while the lore and story are presented very seriously, the heart of Pacific Drive can also be very silly and fun-focused. Upgrading a station wagon with armor plating can only be taken so seriously.
Players will need to upgrade their vehicle by salvaging materials found within the Olympic Exclusion Zone. Exploration is key, both to uncover details regarding what the OEZ is and how it came to be, and to gather components required to progress further into the game. Just upgrading the station wagon isn't enough, though. Players will have to drive around destructive obstacles and horrors that lurk in the night, too. Station wagons are only so powerful, armor plating or not.
Luckily, in Pacific Drive players will have as many chances to explore the OEZ as they need. As a "Road-Lite," each venture into the OEZ is a run that will reset upon unfortunate conclusion. The OEZ is ever-shifting, so no single run will be the same. But progression will require players consistently overcome challenges.
It's difficult to pin down what Pacific Drive is. It's a driving game, but players will be out of their vehicles often to salvage. Pacific Drive is a rogue-lite, but with structured progression and a supernatural story to follow. It's a mystery, only it's experienced in bite-sized chunks. The new trailer does a great job presenting the gameplay basics for the driving game, but players will have to try it out for themselves to understand what Pacific Drive is really about.
Pacific Drive releases in 2023 on PC and PS5.
