Pacific Drive is a unique, car-based survival game that is extremely underrated. You have to manually do many things that would be done automatically in other games, like turning the key to start the car. It’s funny how something so trivial and tedious can be made fun simply by being in a video game.

The game has you trying to survive a dangerous zone with all sorts of anomalies that can hurt you, and your car is your only source of protection. In turn, you have to find junk to repair and craft upgrades for your car to delve deeper into the zone.

You won’t find another game quite like it, but. Whether it’s crafting from junk, inventory management in stressful situations, making loot runs, or having a precious vehicle you need to take care of that you’re looking for, there are a few other games that will give similar satisfaction.

Dredge is surprisingly similar to Pacific Drive, but there are a few core differences.

Rather than drive a car, you’re driving a fishing boat. Finally, rather than manually operating the vehicle like a simulation, it’s much more arcade-like and simple.

Otherwise, the games are pretty alike. Most of your time in both games is spent going on loot runs to try to upgrade your vehicle to explore more dangerous areas, and this is all done with a similar inventory management system. The progression makes for a compelling and addictive gameplay loop in both games.

Both games also have an air of mystery surrounding what’s going on in the plot, and that exciting narrative will push you to look for answers.

Similar to Pacific Drive, in My Summer Car you have to put the pieces of your car together and operate it manually. However, it goes into much more detail in both of those aspects and with a few comedic twists.

For example, The game is frustrating, but in an amusing way. Doors won’t close, pieces of your car will fall off, and flies will chase you down.

This all while trying to fix a car in a surprisingly in-depth way. Rather than simply adding an engine like you would in Pacific Drive, you will have to add dozens of parts together that make up the engine, like the engine block, head gasket, pistons, and more. Unless you're a mechanic, you may need to look up a guide.

Putting pieces of junk together and making something new is pretty cool, and few games scratch that itch better than Fallout 76. It expands on Fallout 4’s crafting system where. Rather than that empty Nuka-Cola bottle weighing you down, you can now use the glass for something like a gun scope.

Not only can you use junk to craft better weapons and armor, but you also use it to build your base. Sure, it's not quite mobile like Pacific Drive, but you will still want defenses for it to fight off pesky attacks while you're trying to get some more crafting done.

Crafting with junk finally gives you a reason to hoard all of those toasters and cans you find lying around.

Inventory management might not sound like a compelling reason to play a game on the surface. However, if you think about it, it’s not too different from a jigsaw puzzle. Add the stress of a dangerous situation that can make you lose everything, and now you have an addicting mechanic that will suck you in.

Escape from Tarkov is an extraction shooter that might have the most stressful inventory management of all time. The game is all about making loot runs, but NPCs and other players can take you out in a single shot at any time. Everything you found in that run is gone, and likely everything you brought as well unless you get lucky with insurance.

The game is punishing. It's quite a few steps up from the slow radiation damage of Pacific Drive, but it gives you a similar feeling when you escape with good loot.

Few games have had you use a vehicle as your lifeline quite as well as the extremely underrated Mad Max game. Like in Pacific Drive, you need your car, and it needs you. Max is out in the desolate, dried-up remnants of the ocean. Trying to get anywhere on foot would take a long time, and you can’t forget about the roaming War Boys, Roadkill, and The Buzzards.

Sure, Max is a capable fighter, and can survive without his car, but some tasks require some heavy-duty tools. As you progress through the game, you will upgrade your car, making it stronger and faster, and giving you access to the second half of the map.

The crafting and survival mechanics aren't nearly as in-depth as Pacific Drive. However, it covers a lot of similar ground for being an action-adventure game.

Similar to Pacific Drive, Raft is a survival game .

You use a unique plastic hook to reel in an endless stream of wooden planks, plastic bottles, barrels, and other things floating in the ocean. With this junk, you can expand your raft and build all sorts of useful survival contraptions like a kiln or water purifiers.

To add a challenge, there’s a man-eating shark that stalks your raft, occasionally biting chunks off of it. If you go into the water, the shark will often try to take bites out of you as well, so you won't want to be in it for long.

It's a simpler and more relaxed game compared to Pacific Drive, but sometimes that's what you're looking for.

While Starfield may have fallen flat in some areas compared to previous Bethesda titles, one area it excelled was in crafting a progressively more complex vehicle that acted like a mobile base.

and offer different benefits.

For example, Hab modules are traversable areas within the ship that can hold crafting stations. Grav Drives will determine how far you can travel. Cargo modules will increase your storage space, which means rather than traveling all the way back to your main base, you can drop things off on your ship and continue exploring.

While you don't craft these modules out of junk as you do with the car parts in Pacific Drive, the upgradability and mobile storage functions of these vehicles are exceedingly similar.

A core component of Pacific Drive is making runs where you collect as much as you can carry, and if you swap runs for dives, that’s a core component of Dave the Diver as well.

Dave The Diver is a unique game that has you. You only get to dive twice per day, and are limited in how much you can carry, so optimizing the loot you return with becomes an important strategy.

There are also plenty of mysterious plot lines that unravel as you explore the Blue Hole that the sushi restaurant floats on. It makes perfect sense for a game as weird as Dave The Diver to be filled with mysteries.

Jalopy is a driving sim where you’re, meaning you constantly have to perform repairs.

Driving and repairing the car are done similarly to Pacific Drive, although you won’t have the scanner to figure out the problem as easily.

It's the perfect alternative to Pacific Drive if you want something a bit more on the cozy side as no freaky anomalies are trying to crash your car. That said, you do have to look out for traffic. Nothing will ruin your cozy drive quicker than a fender bender.

Do you like depth in your games? Subnautica is a survival game that involves you diving to extreme depths in an alien ocean for resources. Okay, that may not be what you mean, but the game does have deep gameplay features as well.

To dive deeper and deeper into this ocean safely, you often use submarines in the way you use your car in Pacific Drive. of the murky deep while you scour for resources to upgrade them.

Driving and repairing the submarines isn't as involved as driving and repairing the car from Pacific Drive, but you will have to go and plug holes and extinguish fires in the larger Cyclops submarine after taking damage.