The Arctic Drive playtest turned our survival road trip into a comedy of errors

I've played a fair few survival games in my time, and they're always a fun experience. When the virtual world you find yourself in is the very thing trying to kill you, things get a bit personal. Add in some friends and more than a few questionable decisions, and you get Arctic Drive. 

Arctic Drive, currently in development by Pebbles Games and PlayTogether Studio, is a one-to-four-player survival driving game that pits you against the freezing tundra of the Arctic Circle. Getting from one place to another becomes less of a straightforward drive and more of a comedy of errors; at least that's my experience. 

Everything included here is true of the playtest build of Arctic Drive. Things may change between now and future builds, but here's how things went for me during my time with the playtest. 

A promising start

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The first vehicle in Arctic Drive is a vintage hatchback that's easy to find but a little harder to put together. Thankfully, everything you need is relatively close by, and you can recycle pretty much anything in a crusher to get crafting supplies. You're soon ready to set out in search of the mysterious Brian. I have no idea who Brian is or why we're following him out into the frozen tundra, but I can safely say it was all downhill from this point onward. 

Mainly because I threw one of the designated car seats away and my fiancé ended up driving the car while sitting on a toilet. In hindsight, that was probably a sign of how this first attempt was going to go, but at the time it was just too funny to care. 

We're soon on the winding, frozen roads of this desolate place, leaving the first gas station behind and heading off in search of our pickup truck. With the techno station on full blast, we're bopping our heads to the beat and having a grand old time. Everything feels great! And then we stumble across a pickup truck, just like we were supposed to. 

We're still unsure whether it was the one we were meant to find. It was stuck inside a building, took us 30 minutes of manual wiggling to free, and required us to butcher our previously fully working car to get it vaguely roadworthy. The toilet and armchair didn't fit inside the cab, so we replaced them with metal desk chairs we found by the dumpsters, and set off on the road again. 

A comedy of errors

This is where our previously fun-yet-mildly-disastrous trip through the frozen countryside takes a steep and hilarious decline, starting with me telling my fiancé I'm hungry and him feeding me the only food he had available: spoiled dog food. 

Obviously I got sick, so he told me to take the pills we had in the trunk. Of course I didn't read what those pills were, but they seemed to make me sicker. My health kept declining, and I thought I was a goner. To add insult to injury, my fiancé got stuck in a dumpster, and I just had to watch while he cosplayed a bearded raccoon, all while I thought I was dying and this might be the last thing I ever saw. 

I don't think I've laughed so hard while gaming in a long time. Everything kept going from bad to worse, and all hope of getting through this alive was gone. After my fiancé managed to bounce his way out of the trash, and I somehow miraculously survived the dog food incident, our situation only became more ridiculous. 

It's all downhill from here

We hopped in the pickup truck and left the shell of our old, reliable car behind. Did we fill up with gas? No, of course we didn't, because that would be the responsible thing to do. And we're in a pickup truck with half a bonnet, a police light on the roof, and metal desk chairs for seats here; we're clearly the opposite of responsible. 

After getting a little way down the road, and only after stealing a gargoyle from a graveyard to put on top of the truck, we hit rock bottom. We're in the middle of nowhere when the gas finally runs out. My fiancé gets hypothermia, and things look bleak. On the plus side, I inexplicably remained a nice and toasty 37°C. Remember those mystery pills I took earlier after the dog food incident? I can only assume they contained antifreeze. 

So, with my apparent invincibility, I get out and start to push, and for a while it looks like we might reach our destination, albeit slowly. That is, until my fiancé drops dead and the battery dies. In the silence, I put his corpse on a stretcher and attached him to the towbar before continuing the now very lonely and slow journey towards our destination. 

Things we learned along the way

We never arrived, mainly because real life beckoned and we had to quit. However, all things considered, our first attempt at Arctic Drive did teach us some valuable lessons. 

1. Never eat spoiled dog food or ingest mystery pills without reading the packaging

2. Maybe skip the first pickup truck you find and stick with the reliable hatchback

3. Always fill up the tank whenever you can

4. Arctic Drive can get absolutely hilarious despite its serious setting

It's safe to say that we had a fun time in Arctic Drive despite all of the terrible situations we found ourselves in, but we also only have ourselves to blame for the hardships we encountered. The game provides you with absolutely everything you could need to successfully reach your destination; we just failed to plan ahead and paid the price. 

Arctic Drive is a multiplayer game that requires some level of teamwork, but that also means you can have fun sabotaging the run if you're that way inclined. Of course, the aim is survival, but when the back seat passengers can pull the handbrake with no warning, it's almost required that hijinks take place. 

I still have no idea who Brian is or why we need to find him, but not all questions need immediate answers.

A release date for Arctic Drive is yet to be revealed, and there is currently no demo. However, you can play the same playtest I experienced here, hopefully with less disastrous results, by signing up through the game’s Steam page.