Our largest ever free content update is now available for all players of Pacific Drive.
Expeditions
We’re happy to introduce a brand new way to play Pacific Drive! Expeditions start in the garage with an ever-changing set of challenges and restrictions, generating new routes, and ramping up the difficulty to ensure that every journey feels fresh. This new way to play is perfect for roguelite fans, offering players endless possibilities to keep playing.
On an Expedition, you’ll be able to visit new Junction types that can assist you or provide you with new obstacles to overcome. Pit Stop junctions will provide you with a safe area to take refuge in, repair the car, and send extra materials back to Oppy’s garage. Anchor Locks will appear, a new challenge that makes you work a little harder to obtain precious Anchor energy, for you to use on your trip however you’d like. There’s also a new trader in the Zone! Ida’s Exchange is a traveling shop where you can trade resources for rare parts, recipes, and new rare garage cosmetics.
Expeditions are available to all players past an early point in the main story. If you’re continuing your save after completing the main Pacific Drive storyline, then you can jump in at a higher difficulty, and as a seasoned driver you’ll be more familiar with some of the unique challenges from the Zone. On a new save, you’ll come across Field Guide Quests, objectives that help you learn more about the game while on an Expedition. The main storyline and Expeditions routes can be completed in parallel so you’ll benefit from progress in either!
Suspend Run
At Ironwood one of the things we’re incredibly proud of are our efforts to stay connected and engaged with our community. Since launch, through feedback and discussion about the game, players have made clear that there is an ask for the ability to save the game at any point. We’re happy to say we’ve been hard at work on a solution.
We firmly believe in the core design of the Pacific Drive gameplay loop and the risk that comes from a potential lost run. However, we know that sometimes life happens - plans can get interrupted and you have to step away, and we wanted to make the game’s save structure more flexible to account for that.
Our solution is giving players the ability to suspend your run and step away from the game at any time, then resume right where you left off.
Previously, Pacific Drive saved upon entry to every new junction and you were able to manually save at any time in the garage. Now you can also suspend your trip at any time in a junction and keep all your progress up to that point. Upon loading back into the game you’ll find yourself on the same trip, in the same location, with your inventory up to date, and your progress in the junction saved.
We’ve been working on this feature for a while, and we do have a more technical explanation planned for the future, but for now we’d just like to thank the community for its detailed notes! We haven’t just implemented Suspend Run on its own, we’ve also made changes in two other key areas:
- Autosaving on entry to a new junction, which can now be turned off via gameplay settings if you’d like to manually manage your saved game
- There is a new ‘Jumpstart’ option when starting a new save, allowing players to bypass the initial tutorial section of the game
New Additional Content and Updates
Alongside our new features, we’ve also added a ton of new content!
- The Plasma Scrapper and Thermal Vacuum have been upgraded, adding new functions
- There is now an additional hour of new music in the game, consisting of 21 tracks from new and returning artists
- 25 New collectible Garage Cosmetics found exclusively during Expeditions
- New Fax Machine entries
- HUD options to allow for more organized, immersive gameplay
- New car cosmetics featuring personalities from the launch period streamer contest
We’ve also made changes to the UI/UX, performance improvements, and added analytics to better inform the team for future updates! To view the full details we encourage you to check out the patch notes linked above.
No time to hop into the game yet? Check out the latest additions to our soundtrack on Spotify!
One year later, Ironwood Studios is proud to continue our work on Pacific Drive. Updates like this one wouldn’t be possible without the support of our excellent community and we look forward to all the adventures you’ll have on your latest Expeditions. Make sure you stay connected by joining us on Discord, Bluesky, X, Instagram, or via Reddit.