The delightfully quirky four-wheeled survival game Pacific Drive has officially sold 600,000 copies, and developer Ironwood Studios has announced that it’s celebrating the milestone with a series of content updates over the rest of the year, the first of which is live now, bringing with it a ton of free extras as well as some silly little cosmetic DLC.
In Pacific Drive’s first free update, players can now document their journey through the anomaly-ridden forests of the Olympic Exclusion Zone with a new photo mode. Available right from the pause menu, players have access to a variety of camera settings (including depth of field, focus control and exposure), a host of aesthetic filters, and the ability to change the weather and time of day during the game.
Photo mode arrives with the new Juke Jet car feature, which when attached to the side rack of your station wagon provides a handy horizontal boost for dodging and drifting. The garage’s fabrication station also features two new upgrade nodes that unlock the Smart Matter Deconstructor and the Vargas Auto-Pac-Vac. The former lets you toss junk into the Matter Constructor from anywhere in the garage, while the latter dumps materials into a transfer trunk before filling up the rest of your vacuum storage.
Other new features include a new performance mode exclusive to Pacific Drive on PS5, new points of interest and worldbuilding details for Ironwood, a new Coastal Highway map, new Follower Stickers and Golden Hood Ornaments, and more. Patch Notes.
The free update (official version 1.6.2) arrives with a new paid DLC called the Friendly Dumpster Customization Pack, which includes a selection of trash-themed cosmetic items to decorate your station wagon, including a Recycled Steering Wheel, Dumpster Devotions Decal Kit, Gift Shifter, Air Trashener, Dumpster Idol, and Cuddle Can.
As detailed in Pacific Drive’s new 2024 post-launch roadmap, this summer’s selection of DLC will be followed by two more releases before the end of the year. This fall, players can expect a free update with new difficulty modes, game customization settings, and cosmetics, as well as another paid cosmetic pack. That will be followed by a winter update, the details of which are being kept under wraps; more details are expected to be revealed “in the coming months.”
If you haven’t yet jumped aboard Pacific Drive and its sentient station wagon and experienced its beautifully bizarre depiction of the Pacific Northwest, it’s well worth your time. Eurogamer’s Chris Tapsell called the game “an exhausting, yet strangely endearing nightmare.” 4 star reviewit’s currently 40% off so you can buy it for £14.99 on PS5 and PC.
