Horror car sim Pacific Drive, aka Jalopy meets STALKER, gets a release date and trailer

rockpapershotgun.com:

I don't drive myself, and while that's mostly because I can't afford a car, don't really need one for work and have wibbly environmentalist sensibilities, it's also because the experience of driving, for me, has been thoroughly spoiled by videogames. I mean, just look at this trailer for Ironwood's Vandemeerian vehicle survival roguelike Pacific Drive. How am I supposed to drive on some stupid road after watching that? What's the point of cars if there are no floating cryptid lifeforms, inexplicable walls of energy or lost research facilities involved?

Pacific Drive is sort of a mixture of My Summer Car and Annihilation, in which you explore a mysterious Exclusion Zone in your station wagon, searching for parts, secrets and occult energy cores with which to energise the portal back to everyday reality, which triggers a battle royale-style race to escape an imploding map. You'll occasionally have to explore on foot, and I'm guessing that crowbar in your right mitt isn't just for performing repairs.

Katharine saw Pacific Drive up-close this spring and was rather impressed by it, describing it as "Control on wheels" (sorry, I'm piling up the comparisons like nobody's business). Here's a longer excerpt from her preview: "The way the shape of the forest gradually emerges through the mist, the sudden flash of an abductor eye through the trees up ahead, and the constant challenges posed by the changeable weather all add up to make the Zone an intriguing, yet dangerous space."

There seems to be a nice helping of automotive maintenance involved, though the game very much isn't in thrall to the dark gods of Realism. You'll have to worry about petrol, battery power, burst tyres and phantom octopus creatures - the aforesaid