Driveloop: Survivors – Preview
There is seemingly an endless supply of Survivors-like titles that have flooded the market since Vampire Survivors’ release. We have seen quite a few good ones that stand out from the crowd, but we have also seen a lot of horrible ones that failed to incorporate the mechanics that actually make these titles enjoyable. Recently, we tried a fairly original entry, namely Earl vs. the Mutants, which added driving mechanics to the mix. This bite-sized title proved to be entertaining, albeit a bit too easy and lacking in content. Now, Driveloop: Survivors enters the fray to provide another vehicular-based Survivors-like experience. The game is currently out in Early Access, and we were curious to see if this one would scratch that itch Earl vs. the Mutants left us with.
Underneath the Mad Max-like exterior lies a fairly traditional Survivors-like, albeit with racing controls. You’ll man a vehicle of your choice, to then be dropped into a stage where enemies come charging straight at you. You have your starting weaponry, but as you slay enemies, you’ll gain experience. When leveling up, you’ll be presented with three choices, which either buff your current weapon(s) or unlock new weapons. It’s a simple formula that works. Outside of killing enemies, there are also additional objectives, such as picking up reinforcements that grant you access to even more weapons, and a simple checkpoint race. The latter’s rewards were rather slim for the risk you’re often taking to finish all checkpoints in time. Some more side objectives would have been nice here. When the timer runs out, you’ll be presented with a boss battle. These bosses are huge bullet-sponges and will probably take you a couple of tries to beat, as you’ll need to have the correct upgrades on hand. As a whole, however, the base mechanics work well and already feel fairly polished.
Even though Driveloop has only gone live as an Early Access project, it does feel a bit barebones for even that. The maps feel extremely empty, the enemy variety is subpar, and the overall grind feels extremely unsatisfying. While with the right level of power-ups, you can become somewhat of a powerhouse during a run, the general unlocks feel extremely underwhelming. You have to grind for quite a few runs to unlock ridiculous micro-upgrades such as an additional 1% pick-up radius. Due to this, it feels like your progress is constantly halted, and the game relies too heavily on playing the same stage over and over again. Of course, a lot of tweaking can happen between now and the full release, but if this system does not get an overhaul, we can see many players giving up before even reaching a few other permanent upgrades. Outside of the underwhelming passive upgrades, you can also unlock new weapons and mods for your vehicles. These are tied to the experience level of your vehicle and require cash to be unlocked. Again, these new weapons are somewhat disappointing, as many are just recolored versions of the starting weapon with a few different base stats.
Currently, Driveloop is also not very optimized. We noticed several slowdowns, and our setup was clearly working overtime when running the game. While we didn’t notice any big stutters or full-on crashes, we felt things didn’t run as smoothly as they could have. Controller support is currently a bit wonky as well, as we often had to use our mouse to make the menu responsive again. This issue only persisted in the actual menus before starting a run.
Conclusion
Driveloop: Survivors has a fairly solid core concept, but it sadly felt a bit bland due to its heavy focus on grinding only to get passive micro-upgrades and unimpressive base weapon variations. The project sounds nice on paper, but the core mechanics that make a lot of these Survivors games fun are missing in this Early Access project. That being said, the foundation is already solid, and it just needs additional content and more interesting upgrades to motivate the player(s) to keep grinding. As it stands now, we suggest picking up Vampire Survivors for a fraction of Driveloop’s RRP, or Nordic Ashes, which charges the same as Driveloop but has so much more content to offer.
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