In-depth: World & Locations

Welcome back to our in-depth blog series.

We'll be discussing and sharing all about the world of Death Drive and its surroundings. How the exploration part of the game works and all the different interactions you come across. Everything is progressing well and according to the roadmap, that also means we'll drop our first gameplay trailer along with the release date hopefully real soon! 💪

Also, be sure to check out our previous post about the camp system if you haven't done so.

https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1682330/view/4453495168694715977

So, let's start with all the breakthroughs we've done.

The world of Death Drive

Exploring, surviving & upgrading.

Following the apocalypse, the places around the world turned to ruins, ashes, and in best-case scenarios to foundations of new settlements, culture and factions. New ideologies emerged, cults and followers that locals feared more than mutated creatures roaming on their territories.

Once the panic and hopes of returning back to normal faded away, stronger communities started fortifying their borders and forming alliances with the nearby settlements. Creating a new universal currency and ensuring safe ways of trading. A hunger for power was born again. As a result, traitors and criminals soon accomplished their goals, enslaving citizens while thirsting for more control, authority and luxury.

Despite the corruption within, right-minded individuals also came in command. Realizing that the deadly monsters were their one and only common enemy, they slowly earned their mutual trust and began fighting for peace, love and morality. With the expansion of their views and beliefs, soon a hope for the new, better world sparked among many.

Exploring

Worldmap also provides you with a detailed forecast view when planning trips.

Exploration part of Death Drive is made up of many different tiles and 3 different depths. These tiles are split into 2 categories, environment tiles and interactive tiles.

Environment tiles are the ones that you can freely move on. These can be perfectly clear areas such as roads with no detrimental effects or more rough ones that slow down your trips and affect combat situations.

Interactive tiles as the name suggests, are the ones that the player can take action on. Basically, everything from lootable objects and hackable panels to shops and other spots that provide you with some kind of interaction. The color of the outline around the tile allows you to quickly distinguish between various different types of tiles. These are also visible on the minimap.

Now, let's talk about the three different levels of exploration. Starting with the world view, this is where you drive your caravan around locating new settlements, places of interest and mastering the trading routes. You're also free to set up your camp anytime you want as long as there are no enemies nearby. Driving in the world view requires fuel, so planning ahead is a must if you're in for the profit.

Entering a settlement or any other location moves you to the location view. Leaving the caravan, you can then walk freely with up to 2 companions, interacting with different tiles, talking to locals and hunting for quests. Setting up a camp is only possible near the entrance of the location you're visiting where your caravan is parked. These locations may also contain accessible buildings.

You move to the third and the final view after you access a building. Here you can find tiles specific to this view only, such as locked doors that lead to other areas or computer systems containing useful information. Multiple story buildings are also present in the game.

Surviving

Death Drive as a project started with survival at its core and in our previous blog post we've talked about some of the main resources you need to keep an eye on to succeed. During the gameplay, each of these supplies are drained over time and that rate is also depended on the game speed. You can switch between 3 different modes: pause, normal and fast forward.

How you manage to survive on the long run is up to you. You can use your caravan to trade goods for profit, scavenge for resources to cook and craft your own stuff at the camp, or complete quests for various rewards.

Friends & enemies

The wilderness is a home to countless zombies and outcome of the apocalypse that evolved creatures beyond their limits. Each and every step that you take outside the protected territories will involve numerous risks.

Because adventures always start with interesting personalities, you can scout various establishments around such as taverns for folks with the right information that in the end may lead to trust and loyal friendship.

What's next?

Once again we're real happy with our recent progress, having completed the map module and all the location specific tasks we're now ready to move on to the quest system. We're also planning a release date announcement soon, along with the first glimpse of gameplay. So, stay tuned for more! ❤️

We're trying to share smaller updates more frequently on our Twitter account, so make sure you follow us! And also, you're more than welcome to join our 👉 community on Discord 👈 and let us know what you think about Death Drive.

Stay safe!