No Dawdling In Driftwood Early Access
Wet eyes, wet pants. Those are the immediate ideas that could be associated with longboarding down a cliff of death with ‘faith’ air brakes, hasty objectives, and a protagonist hairier than Chewbacca’s cojones, Driftwood Early Access is an adrenaline rush without the grazes or Pepsi Max. Looking at you, Generation X. * wink wink *
Even eyeballing the proposed tracks give flashbacks of BMXing down a hill with mates, trying to get the fastest time, only most of us bottled it in 20 seconds or permanently squeezed the brakes as tenderly as an inexperienced teen copping their first feel. If you’re ‘one of them’, that is, someone who constantly brakes in racing games, this might not be for you.
Driftwood Early Access has some of the most serene landscapes, a fantastic, mostly chilled soundtrack, and a sloth named Eddy as the main character, though it’s juxtaposed with ball-breaking speed and lots of forward-thinking. The latter doesn’t mean this racer from Stoked Sloth Interactive is mathematically intense, but you need to plan a racing line and shift between speed and control.
Driftwood Early Access Preview
Gameplay is immediate. After a tutorial explains the concept of gravity, trajectory, and booleans (that last one I made up), Eddy is off in their camper van, finding the next best place to launch their board off. There are no tales of heartbreak, no dead grandpas leaving you a farm to manage, nor a subtext of climate change: Driftwood Early Access is a straightforward downhill racer where you’ll aim to meet objectives, get on the leaderboards, and unlock loadsa bling for Eddy to sport.
The best way to explain this without linking to a YouTube video is to imagine playing Lonely Mountains Downhill on a skateboard from a chase camera perspective and gliding through environments not too far detached from the gorgeous biome, Lake. Oh yeah, and you’re a sloth named Eddy. That’s key.
Some choice words on Steam and marketing circles instil a chill vibe, and while the artwork and playlist are perfect, Driftwood is the type of game that requires a restart again and again. That’s not a bug reference, more to do with perfectionism when chasing elusive targets such as reaching the bottom of a mountain/hill without faceplanting or completing a track in X number of seconds. On the plus side, should you cock up halfway through, the score accumulated through speed and tricks will chip away at the next level of gear.
Board Of Going Slowly, Slowly
Gear is both cosmetic and practical. For the latter, each stage allows selecting of a board and its respective wheels. The advantages/disadvantages stem from handling for the boards, whereas the wheels affect the grip – a.k.a. drifting. No one stage has a defined setup, as sometimes choosing a slippery disposition will assist with drifting scores, or something stiff and rigid (fnar fnar) will be better suited for speeding through a stage to shave off time. Cosmetics are precisely that; kitting Eddy out in some stylish clothing and sweet deck prints for their board.
Drifting back to that bug reference, Driftwood is in Early Access, and there are a few niggles. I’ll leave bug hunting to Bugsnax (not just a pretty face, eh?), but the immediate ones were pop-ups, such as incoming cars that run you over or ragdolling a little too much. On the rare occasion, Eddy appeared unanimated in the terrain, but a quick exit to the menu and restart resolved those. Again, very rare, and considering this was played on the Steam Deck, it runs very well.
Lonely Mountains Downhill was my GOTY in whatever year that came out, and ignoring the interest in mountain biking, Driftwood shares a lot of the good stuff that made that title a hit. A few technical issues need minor attention, but if you know my approach to reviews by now, I’m easygoing and don’t see this as an issue. Snap this up now, regardless of those pop-ups mentioned above.
Outside of the obsession with Disney Speedstorm, Driftwood Early Access has been my go-to game for fun on the Steam Deck, not just because it’s an article with a deadline. Eddy might be mellow, laid-back and slothful, but boy, are they fast.