In Drive Beyond Horizons, you play as a middle-adged bald guy living in the middle of a desert. Is it is house? Nobody knows. But you start at "home" where you prepare for a journey of your own making. In the demo, you just have "scenario" mode which has you driving 50 Kilometers (not sure what that is in Imperial measurement off the top of my head) to "find a secret". In the full version (Early Access for $14.99), you have a second mode "Infinite" which I believe is for the purpose of just exploring the landscape, restoring cars, and unlocking achievements. Yes...restoring cars, that's a thing in this game.

There's a decent array of classic automobiles you can run around the desert putting back together with all original parts for achievements and unlocking those cars as your starter vehicle. THe default starter is a Soviet Russian Lada VAZ model, but includes cars from all over the world including JApan, America, and Germany, making it very hard to pin down this game's setting because the landscape screams Australia, but there's European elements, and the American elements that scream somewhere like Arizona or Rural Nevada. You have to drive over 20KM before you can do this.

Dotted across the landscape are many locations to explore and find things at, Ranches, Gas Stations, Radio Towers, Garages, Bars, Auto Wrecks, Outhouses, Bus Stops....all of these sources of sustainance, and occasionally, encounters with brain-hungry Zombies to take down with your fists or a couple firearms added to the game (a Missile Launcher and an AK-47 rifle). Other risks include Landmines and your own stupidity, particularly at Gas Stations.

I started the game and was immediatley reminded of Walking Simulator 2020. Post apocalyptic but strangely retrowave at the same time.

I only had one mode in the demo, scenario, so of course I start, in a house that looks like something I recall seeing in Crocodile Dundee or Mad Max, filled with canned goods, backpack, and an old East European car missing just enough parts to still be usable but guide me to the idea I need to assemble it (Lada/Dada).

My first outing in the demo ended when I blew up the Lada (which was running out of water, and running on drunken piss, petrol, and diesel, and overheating a lot as I had not realized how realistic they were trying to make car ownership in this game), ran about 15KM on foot, and died to a Zombie Infested garage unaware of "MeLee Mode".

However, it was so enjoyable by round 3, where I built another Dada car that ran out of gas about 10km in, survived 5 days off soda and canned goods at gas stations, ran drunkenly for several KMs, and beat up some ZOmbies, but had to run off to use the bathroom and tend to life, I pennied up the bux for the full version.

The System REquirements for the Demo are a bit lower. It runs great on my Lenovo THinkCentre PC with the NVIDIA GT730 in it, but the full version struggles a bit with it's far more detailed and fancy landscape, and increased amount of items to be proceedurally generatated (it's generated like A.I. music/pictures are - there's a "Seed#" which is used to produce the in-game assets off, leading to a VERY high replay value off the bat. No two games are the same). My i7 Dell FrankenLaptop though rocks it with a GTX930 with the "Dynamic" enhancement of the 930 switched between the intel. I think the Lenovo needs a GPU upgrade already.

The full version expands the game massively, and there's already been one update since I bought Early Access which has improved things more and well...added Level 0 of the Backrooms to it (well, that's what it looks like at least).

So in one of my runs, I managed to find a Hotel and got into the Backrooms with a GEiger Counter which leads to assembling a GoKart out of a shopping cart.