The Long Drive

This game gives you an authentic balkan car trip experience.

good game but the drunk effects are way too shitty and unnoticeable

Amazing game idea, amazing execution. Lack of developers is strangling its development but I would recommend the game in its current state to anybody.

If you pay 16 dollars for this game. You've been scammed. Overall don't buy till they actually do something with this game.

I won't deny that I've enjoyed this game, but that was back when I had hope for the future of this game. That hope is all but gone. You likely won't find updates here, look elsewhere if you're after a cared for game.

There hasn't been significant development on this game in the past few years, and anything over 60hz causes the physics engine to miscalculate

It is really buggy, which can be fun in multiplayer, but a lot of the time it is just annoying.

Alpha build review: It is a good game to play while you have a podcast going or watching a tv show on the side. with co-op it is a perfect comedy game, if you have a group of friends you want to just hang out and be dumb it is a perfect game for that.

I think by the full release it will be more detailed and more functions with cars and the open road, as it stands it is a bit "empty" but the dev is adding more and more.

It was good before the developers broke the game and abandoned it. I can't recommend it anymore. If you want to try the experience or come back as an old player, there is a new game with very similar mechanics called "Drive Beyond Horizons", feels more polished and gets updates at least.

TL:DR, Wasted Potential.

Starting with positives because people stop reading halfway.
-This game's concept is really cool, the gameplay loop is addicting when you get into it and no wonder why it dominated the Roblox platform twice, (a dusty trip/dead rail). I actually first discovered from joeseppi with his long drive part 1 and it portrayed it as an interesting game where you survive and drive.
-The physics may not be the best from what other people has said and some of my experience, but at least I can put stuff in the car without needing to attach it so it doesnt fly off (hint to another game platform).
-And the mechanics on how to survive, like the fuels, car parts, food, enemies, and relying on buildings to get those resources keeps the gameplay interesting.

Negatives (I know the game is still in "Early access" but that doesn't mean it's immune to criticism)
-It's boring as hell. After driving for a very long time, it's just not interesting anymore and the same thing, there's a reason why the boring part of road trips are the driving parts. There is no end goal, which sure can be fun to see how long you can last, but really though in its current state it's boring, everything is repetitive. At least in another survival open world sandbox game, aka minecraft, there are many areas in the game you can really enjoy (redstone/multiplayer minigames).
-No multiplayer? Yes I know there's a beta, but why is multiplayer not a main part of this game? This game feels like it's better built with multiplayer survival, heck that's the whole reason why "a dusty trip" and "dead rail" became so popular (despite me not liking them as much).
-Not taking itself too seriously. There's a lot of joke stuff in the game which can be funny but it ruins a lot of the immersion and it's hard to tell if you want us to treat this game as a cool unique game or a joke. For example being the voice lines for the enemies like this could've been great potential to drop lore or unsettling emotions to the player, but no they decide to go with like "I wanted to die anyways" whatever. I'm not sure how long they spent mucking around with these jokes compared to working on the actual game to make it better and finished, but come on it's been 2 years since an official update. Yes devs can muck around and have fun and I agree with that, but there are some times you gotta be serious.
-It's falling behind. Basically, "A long road", the Roblox version has unironically become better than this game. Challenging but more interesting to explore buildings. Does it's "jokes" whenever it doesn't need to be serious (e.g feastibles bar as food in the abandoned store), and literally has car battery management, windshield wipers, playable buttons inside the car etc. The redeeming part is that this game has better physics than "A Long Road", due to Roblox's bad physics engine, and more car customizations.
-Where are the updates? I'm glad they at least update us on their progress on their steampage... well last one being 5 months ago as of writing this, but come on guys.
-Bad UI. Again, I know it's Early Access and I'm sure the devs will change it to make it better, but man not only it's inconsistent, like the discord button vs the newspaper button, but it's just honestly ugly and looks like a bloatware game.
-Not really beginner friendly. I'm not a car expert but I did have some background knowledge on how this game worked. But a lack of tutorial at the start of the game, like how Dead Rails has one, to teach the basics on how to start the car would really help. Luckily, I had a car friend to help me identify what car parts needs what, what type of liquid it takes and how to do other stuff with the car, but really though, if your game needs an external source (like a wiki or tutorial) on how to do things that isn't said in the game, then that's just bad game design.
-Graphics. The graphics are both hit or miss, like sometimes it looks really cool like the screenshots I sent to my friends, and some time it looks like an asset flip. Like the phone is just flat, while the rest looks normal, the car looks cool, but your player model is.. what the heck? It doesn't help when I found out some of the paintings were AI generated BUT that's my anti-ai bias so I'll let that slide because some people support AI.

Overall, if the Long Drive kept getting worked on and the devs took the game more seriously, then I'm sure this will be an amazing game. Joeseppi advertised the game really well I'm sure the devs earned a good enough of money from that to hire some people to work on some aspects of the game. But until then, the Roblox version "A Long Road" has unironically become better and more fun to play than "The Long Drive". Thankfully I only spent around 20% of its original price.

This game is shit.
There is nothing more to say about it.

Devs are deaddroping ass updates once in a century and there is absolutely no hope that it will ever be finished.

I bought this crap in the first place because it scratched my specific autistic itch about cars, please spend your money elsewhere.

driving at a steady 50 mph
dont want to bust my wheels up on whatever nonsense plagues the pavement
light up another cigarette.
its night.
who knows how long i've been at it
open up a beer, take a swig. it could be piss
who cares honestly
who's gonna judge you?
who's gonna look at you, point at you and laugh
and say
hey look this guys drinking piss
so what
so what if its piss
it could blood.
it could be piss and blood
there might even be some motor oil in it
but who's gonna judge you?
when your closest friend is the distant voice veiled behind the static of the radio?
I keep changin the knob to find him
sometimes I run off the road
sometimes you just need to take a shit and throw it out the window you know?
break out the air rifle and shoot a rabbit
thats what my uncle chuck always told me too
these roads are always the same but i always gotta be on the look out
looking out for these mindless self obsessed zombies scattered about the roadway
who knows man
maybe I'm just one of them too
maybe I'm just another sad soul just like them
missing their family
god I miss my wife
whatever the fuck that is
are these my children or just trophies I put in the back seat?
I'm just so tired
Pull over and take a nap, leave the car running and the lights on
unfortunately I wake up, dawns breaking
look at the dash, gotta stop and get some gas
gotta make sure I'm putting the right stuff in
check the trash can for some food or water
hey its my lucky day
found some 12 gauge buck shot
throw it in my glove box for later
get back on the road
finally get off my exit on I-95
get home, start playing the long drive

This is a "not recommended" purely because of the price-tag and lack of meaningful updates.

The Long Drive is a Capital J Janky game; the physics are fine unless any object collides with basically any other object, things can get stuck inside each other and become impossible to remove (especially with windshields), using items like steel brushes and sponges can be really finnicky - but it's a game that's designed to be janky. This isn't a demerit, and adds a lot to the overall charm of the game, but keep it in mind through the rest of the review.

After about ten hours, you've seen pretty much everything there is to see. Buildings and vehicles repeat, the same two types of enemy will have been killed many times over, you probably will have experienced all the different biomes and road types. TLD is a survival game, so you're out to collect items and resources (fuel, oil, water, food, so on), while not being killed - but the enemies are trivial, and you'll have a weapon able to instantly kill anything from the moment you load in. Fuel, oil, and water (for your coolant) are rare and valuable resources at first, but make it far enough and you'll basically never run out. What I'm getting at here is that the survival element, and the "challenge", become entirely irrelevant beyond a certain point; rather than having plenty to start with and kicking yourself for not rationing better as you progress, you start with barely enough and end up with a complete excess.
But The Long Drive isn't the kind of survival game where you want to retry and "improve" over and over; it feels more like a sandbox than anything, so treating it like a roguelike wouldn't be fair. But again, keep this in mind.

What The Long Drive really IS about, is... well, the act of driving; of fixing up a car, or bike, or bus and hitting the road for miles and miles. Removing the rust, polishing the steel, painting it your favourite colour - the fun is in the journey. The problem is that many cars you find are in such a state of disrepair that they're unsalvageable; you can't just have your favourite, you have to really be prepared for it. So you get your trailer, an engine powerful enough to pull it, and you bring along any pieces you can find for the car you REALLY want to drive - and once again, the game is a janky mess.

You see, at the end of the day, glitches and bugs can only be so charming. A physics engine that barely works is fun when you don't have to care about it, but you DO in this game; and it's not the only frustration. Autosaves will cause the game to freeze momentarily - bad news when you're going 160km/h on a bumpy road; the game has a "precise steering" mode - which is necessary to make playing on m&kb not feel like pulling teeth - but for some reason using it reduces the power in the engine, so you have to toggle it on and off when changing speeds; multiplayer is practically unplayable for how unstable it is now; crashing your vehicle is both anticlimactic and glitchy as hell. The intention of the devs, according to their Early Access statement, is to make "the ultimate open world car driving game" - but most of the world is barren, and the driving doesn't feel particularly good for all these reasons, so...

And honestly, I'd still be willing to forgive all this; it's good enough, it's enjoyable enough, but... it's been in early access for over five years. The last full update was nearly two years ago. For $16/£13, you can have a janky mess of a game with no production timeline, no actual ending (the road just stops generating after 5,000km), barebones survival elements, a relatively small selection of vehicles, and ten hours at best before everything is repetition. Isn't that a steal!

If it seems like your thing, get it on sale and try it out. But keep in mind the full release was meant to be Q4 of 2023, then it got pushed to Q4 2024, and now we're heading into Q2 of 2025 with no full version in sight. Don't expect it to get anything "more" or anything "better" than what it is right now.

Custom music while constantly crashing my car in The Long Drive is fucking fantastic. I slam into a rock at 90 miles per hour, several barrels are thrown through the vehicle. My car rapidly dismantles itself, two wheels rocketing into the stratosphere, the other two sent several miles west and east respectively. Through the haze of blood on my windshield, i see my fucking engine keep its momentum somehow. As my screen fades to black, i hear the opening notes to Gangnam Style.

Fun game to play with friends but needs some sort of incentive or end goal to achieve

Very funny and enjoyable. Just make sure to twist things up so it doesnt get boring.

just areally great multiplayergame, can get boring after awhile by yourself

In my orpinoin is this game pretty underrated, i know the graphics are not the best and i died more times to random spawning stones and the door glitch where you can knock yourself out then the zombies but it is always fun to play. I count The Long Drive to my favorite games of all time, but the door glitch have to get fixed.

good game, but only play with the test version, please for the love of god

Not everyone is going to enjoy this game. It is far from polished. Modifying/upgrading your car is probably the best part of this game. The worst part is probably that there is no real end goal other than to drive. I've never done multiplayer so I can't say if it's good or not.

Overall I'd say in it's current state it is a fine game, maybe with some more work from the dev it could be a good game.

The Long Drive is one of the most strangely captivating indie games out there. At first glance, it seems like a simple road trip simulator set in a procedurally generated desert. But spend a little time behind the wheel, and you’ll quickly realize it’s a bizarre, often hilarious, and surprisingly immersive experience.

You start off in a small house with a beat-up car and almost no instructions. From there, you're on your own—driving through a never-ending wasteland, scavenging for fuel, car parts, weapons, and even food. It's a survival game at its core, but one that doesn’t take itself too seriously. The controls are janky (on purpose), the physics are chaotic, and weird things constantly happen—like haunted rabbits, UFOs, or your car randomly losing a door after hitting a bump.

What makes the game shine is the freedom and unpredictability. There’s no goal other than to keep moving forward, and that simplicity makes every small discovery feel like an adventure. Whether it's finding a bus and customizing it into a mobile base, or getting into trouble because you strapped a toilet to the hood of your car “just because,” The Long Drive encourages creativity and absurdity.

The graphics are basic but effective, the sound design is surprisingly immersive, and the overall vibe is a mix of eerie emptiness and dry humor. It's definitely not for everyone, but if you enjoy sandbox survival games with a touch of chaos and dark humor, The Long Drive is a hidden gem.

2 years without updates.
I allowed myself the luxury of buying the game to support its development and updates, but I completely regret it.
The game is empty and there's nothing to do — just play for 3 hours and you’ve seen all the content.
FULL OF BUGS, almost impossible to play — there wasn’t a single run where I didn’t encounter bugs.
Poorly optimized and with terrible physics.
Until the game is properly updated, it’s not worth buying.

I can't tell if this the worst or best game ive ever played

the player character animations and models are the goofiest and most terrifying ive ever seen in a game, for example crouching makes you look like a human spider

the driving is okay, the cars are pretty unique : a lot of old cars from former east germany, so a lot of two-stroke engines, witch is intresting. theres a vintage american car that is really nice to drive, speeds up to 120MPH or ~200Km/h
the controls are awful at first, but you get used to it and when you do its not that horrible

everything in this game is hillariously bad but it somehow makes the game good ? this game is mesmerizing I swear, its a "so bad its good" kind of deal here, 10/10

Multiplayer is completely broken and the game isn't fun enough to play on your own. No real updates in years.

Don't bother.

fun game the mutiplayer is good (and goofy) whatever the price is it is worth it

Dumb fun. The controls are bad and, the graphics are rough, but it's fun to just zone out and drive, or try to repair/replace your car as you go along while occasionally being attacked by weird large vampire rabbits. I'd say for sure to grab it on sale for now though.

Game is buggy as hell though.

honestly the game in singleplayer is great fun but if you're buying it for multiplayer please be aware that it is so non-functional that it can be really funny but otherwise impossible to play the game.

games' good but it's being developed at a snails pace, it's stuck of a update test for almost half a year now

this is a fun driving/adventure game and has a helpful/fun discord community, but does have a lot of bugs that can't be fixed for whatever reason

genuinely a really cool driving sim. it's janky and really weird but the core driving part is really awesome. i wish there was a way to take the rocks off the road though thats kind of annoying

Check out Drive Beyond Horizons for a game like this that isn't abandoned and has functioning multiplayer.

i joined long drive discord my personal computer is running gtx 980. why is fps low my computer run bad after launch. bug ...? please fix and hiding the truth is bitcoin crypto

Found a pushbike.
Put a V8 in it.
Overheated.
Pissed on it to cool it down.
repeat.
10/10.

This game scratches a very specific urge for me. The urge to drive a '58 Plymouth Fury cross-country with nothing but the clothes on your back and a dream. Due to issues outside of my control (Thanks vision issues.) I thought I could never live that dream. Thanks to The Long Drive, this and more is in my grasp. Put some twangy post-war rock and roll on the custom radio(!) and you have an evening in. Perfect.

Its a goofy road trip game, but the game is heavily unnoptimized. That does ruin the experience a bit, but its fun nonetheless

Good Game To Stream At Sometimes when your bored but it has a few bugs but still for the discounted price is really good

I know the game hasn't been updated since Nov 2024 (Currently March 2025) but I'm having a blast ! I almost never buy "early access" but this is good. I've heard that the devs are rewriting the game from scratch, we'll see! In the meantime, it's great as is.

really fun and unique game, don't make the same newbie mistake i done and start your long road trip without extra fuel and stock in your car XD, even thoe there are some minor bugs 10/10 i would recommend it.

very fun and realistic. tiny bit glitchy but thats just our pc

Game is fun, but need lots of patching and recoding to work probably.

best game ive played in a while looking forward to future updates ( i would say the game is a 13 as there are severed limbs and ''mutants'' ( also 13 for difficulty))

Quite possibly the jankiest game I've ever played but, I can't quite get enough of it.
Now, I just want to state something important:
This game has been pretty much completely abandoned by the devs. Regardless, it's actually a ton of fun.
If driving through a desert in a beaten up old rust bucket, or a hulked out battle bus full of weapons, sex dolls and severed limbs is your cup of tea, you'll definitely enjoy this game. It has a pretty active modding community on its Discord, too.

I've heard the multiplayer is pretty buggy, but I'm not a multiplayer kind of guy so I don't know too much about that side of it.
So yeah... don't expect any updates. They're not coming.

Easy learning curve, great gameplay : prepare gas/oil/water tanks + clean car + fill gas/water/oil + drive + loot + repeat

What a vibe. Worth the purchase price and a ton of replay-ability.

Despite the title of the game, you're not that likely to die from driving, no matter how much your car flips over. Meanwhile, I died once from opening a door too hard and it ended up slamming into me, killing me instantly. 10/10, recc for those who just want to spend all their gaming time driving endlessly

this game is super funny i love to see the cars fly up in the air when i drive in a rock or in a house!

The game is overall very interesting and original, the graphics quality is not the best, likewise the optimisation, but the gameplay is simple: drive, stop at a gas station, replenish your food etc. Rinse and repeat. Now, there are quite a few bugs and issues but they are expected to be in this early access state. I really hope that this game receives many more new and exciting updates. I recommend this game.

They broke the multiplayer mode 2+ years ago and have no intention to fix it. I went into the discord a little bit after the last update and was practically told to f**k off by fans because multiplayer was no longer part of the vision of the game or whatever, now it has not been updated whatsoever in almost 2 years.
Crazy.

Make sure you actually have friends, and this game is the best!! also fun single player, but multiplayer makes it all the better.

Fun game for a couple who have a love for road trips but can't afford/don't want to leave home <3 We purchased the game yesterday and have played for 18 hours already. It is hilarious and such a blast!