Nightmare Drive

This is still very early access, so the question is if there's enough content here to buy this game right now. For a new player there's a good amount of stuff to do, collecting cars, killing zombies, levelling up and buying garage upgrades. I got ~25 hours of play before I ran out of things to do in the current version, but could easily just relax and enjoy the core gameplay loop for a while longer. Build a car, drive around and run over zombies, explore locations for loot and supplies, stop at the arcades to play the in-game mini-games and check the leaderboards. Objective criticism: - Performance is ok, high/ultra settings gave me a consistent ~100fps (9800X3D + RTX3080) with minimal load stutter - 0 (ZERO) crashes in my entire time playing. Very stable, good work! - Only one manual save slot but 3 auto save slots added - Initial load time and level load times are fast (gen4 SSD) with no in-game loading - Skill levelling is unique to this genre of janky driving sim - Huge packs of zombies (up to 100 I've seen) that all ragdoll when hit with your car, but very basic pathfinding and clipping issues (they can hit you through walls etc) - Multiplayer (I did not test) - Decent range of paints & parts, with a small amount of customization (some things can be swapped, some cannot) - Interesting events and hints to a larger backstory, not implemented yet - No speedometer, just a flat texture dash with dials that make no sense, like 2 tachometers instead. - Needs a little bit of work with some minor things, like video settings not saving between sessions. - You can tow other vehicles or a trailer, which is great for looting. - Can buy a persistent garage which will randomly spawn along your travels, with all your saved cars/stuff in it. Subjective criticism: - Crashing your car has no impact, which is good or bad depending on what you want, and it auto-flips when needed because there's no way to "push" things in-game except for the manual "flip" and "unstuck" buttons, which don't help when you just want to move a chassis out of the way so you can loot behind it etc. - Interesting terrain, procedurally generated but with sections that repeat too often. IMO needs more biomes, road sections and road surface types. There are invisible walls a short distance from the road, so exploration is limited and there are no POI's hidden far off-road so there's no point leaving the road, except maybe one tower just a short distance from the road. - Vehicle handling is somewhere in the middle of this game's competitors. Not realistic but also not the worst. Just "ok". Vehicle selection is minimal; one small modern sedan, two sports cars, one old pickup truck. - You have a melee and ranged weapon, the melee is an axe and worth using when exploring locations but the gun is useless, and most of the time it's easier (and more fun) to just run over crowds of zombies with your car. There are also turrets you can place on the ground or on your car, but they only hit one zombie at a time so I only use that as a decoration. - Decent range of POI's (locations to loot) but they are very "asset store", which isn't a bad thing but they need some more work to look like they are actually part of this game. Too many objects which are not interactable, loot in nonsense locations, ladders which cannot be climbed. Also the POI's are a little bit too close to each other, I normally find one after only 1-2 minutes of driving. More POI's further apart would make the drive more worthwhile I think. - Zombie physics are hilarious, running through a crowd is very fun. There are zombie-killing and protection parts for your car/s BUT they are only cosmetic, you can run over zombies without them and they cannot hurt you while you're in the car even when stopped. - There is another enemy type which is rare to see but a fun addition, I think this could be developed into more of a challenge so that you can't just run it over, in this version you might not even notice it. - Parts collecting can be both fun and frustrating, it's cool to get an achievement for a completed car but some of the parts can be tiny and easy to miss. I think some small parts like indicators could be just added to the body/trunk etc, and other larger parts should be added. Steering wheels for example, and different tyre (tire) types. - Music is soulless AI generated slop and it shows. And it starts every time you load your save and get into your car (it stays off after that though). This adds nothing to the game, I didn't like any of them. A custom music channel would be much better so you can just add your own, or at least some royalty-free instrumental tracks. - The leaderboards are a nice addition, anyone can beat the high scores on an arcade game if skilled enough, but the road distance / zombies killed are persistent so new players would have a hard time getting on the board top 20 unless they start NOW. Dev seems motivated and listens to feedback, so I'm confident that more content is coming BUT again the question is to buy it now? I say yes, it's cheap and there's enough gameplay already in this version to make it good value. I probably won't update this review so just check the update history for the game to see what's been added/fixed since.