As big fans of The Long Dark, we gladly jumped at the opportunity to check out Arctic Drive and take an old car into a frozen wilderness, trying to survive with whatever supplies we can find. Arctic Drive combines driving, scavenging, crafting, and survival. In a way, our car serves as our main companion as we explore the snowy landscape and try to keep it running. Our time with the demo was spent playing solo, gathering supplies, and managing the resources needed to continue the journey.
The driving is enjoyable enough, although it still needs some tweaking to make it more fun. Since so much of the experience revolves around our car, the handling and overall feel behind the wheel are important, and we’d like to see the developers spend more time refining this part of the game. The survival and crafting mechanics work well together. It was fun searching for supplies, collecting materials, and maintaining our vehicle.
There were times when we wished certain tasks were a little easier, though, as managing everything can become more demanding than necessary. It’s easy to go in circles and spend a lot of time searching for something that later turns out to be unnecessary. In doing so, all our time got wasted running around in confusion and starving to death. We hope that the devs will eventually reduce malnutrition damage and add an on-screen notification.
The Arctic Drive demo is a great free way to see if this is a game that you should look forward to. From what we saw, the driving still needs work and some survival mechanics could use better balancing. But we can’t ignore that the combination of vehicle maintenance, scavenging, and crafting has real potential. The game will be out in EA on
25 Nov, 2026!
- Game: Arctic Drive
- Developer: Pebbles Games / PlayTogether Studio
- Publisher: Bonus Stage Publishing
- Platform: PC (Steam)
- Demo: Free to play
- Planned Early Access release: November 25, 2026
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