The Long Drive

The Long Drive is a survival and exploration video game that puts players into a randomly generated post-apocalyptic desert world, tasking them to navigate their way to safety while facing various challenges. However, this is not a hard game.

Instead of putting players through hell with harsh gameplay systems like in many other survival titles, The Long Drive is instead focused on minimal car maintenance and light survival elements that allow players to dedicate themselves to free driving, exploration, and immersion. This approach has enabled this gaming title to become highly popular on the PC platform with players who just want to enjoy driving and discover new randomly generated areas and vistas.

Main Features

The focus of The Long Drive is exploration. The game features a vast world, players are encouraged to explore every nook and cranny to find resources that will help them survive. However, the survival mechanics are fairly light and intuitive, enabling even newcomers to easily manage to survive for a long time in this vast open world. For example, the full tank of fuel enables the players to drive around 500 kilometers, which enables them to drive for hours, visit distant mountains that are barely visible on the horizon, and even drive to their very tops.

Players are free to step out of their cars at any point, enabling them to search the structures found in the game world, upgrade the looks of their cars, store objects in the car trunk, open the hood to change car parts, and more. This generated world features around 5 thousand kilometers of roads, which can be explored at several times of day (dawn, day, dusk, and night).

The game is presented in a first-person view, enabling users to immerse themselves in the world of this barren game. The user's expressiveness can even be showcased during driving, with the in-game player being able to move toward their rearview mirror, car radio, and other parts of the car.

PROS

• Smooth and User-Friendly Experience
• Dedicated Developers
• Open-World Environment
• Vehicle Customization Options

CONS

• Mediocre Physics
• Inclusion of Inappropriate Objects
• Underdeveloped Storyline

Recommended System Requirements

• OS: Windows 11 or Windows 10
• CPU: +3 GHZ quad-core processor or higher
• RAM: 8 GB
• GPU: Nvidia GTX 1050 TI or AMD equivalent or higher
• STORAGE:  700 MB available space

Overall

The Long Drive is a post-apocalyptic simulator that lacks the sense of danger and urgency that many other survival games promote in their core gameplay loop. The game's focus on exploration, day and night cycle, and need for basic needs management add to the overall experience, making it a must-play for casual players who are not interested in complicated gameplay systems.