Let’s Go For a Spin Around the Island in BeamNG Drive

Hey Everyone and welcome to a first look at the up and coming game, BeamNG Drive. This is another "soft body physics" game in development with a tech demo and early access. I went ahead and purchased the "full version" which means this is the alpha build and of course I’ll get access to both the beta and full version when released. For $15, that’s a pretty impressive offer.

Soft Body Physics, to me anyway, means that I can go around and beat the daylights out of the car and it will be visually represented. The hood will crumple, the wheels will bend, the doors will come off. And for the way I drive, that’s a good thing!

BeamNG Drive is somewhat similar to Next Car Game in that the car will take damage and that will affect the driving performance. I very quickly learned that it’s easy to get the car to pull to the left or right as I chose some bad driving lines.

BeamNG Drive is also a bit like SpinTires – at least for the moment. As of right now there are no AI opponents to race, it’s simply a large environment where you can drive one of the 6 car choices. The terrain offers both road and dirt as well as mud that causes you to bog down. I don’t know if BeamNG is a racing game or an "offroad adventure", but either way I had a good time driving around. Do I really need a reason to crash a car and jump it over some rocks? I think not.

I had some trouble with my Xbox controller being detected, but I still managed to drive around using the keyboard. The game looks good and the car handles quite well for these early days. There are some video anomalies, but you have to expect that sort of thing in an alpha build.

Overall I’m impressed with what BeamNG Drive has to offer and look forward to new builds. Right now we have the foundation and I expect things will evolve pretty rapidly. I’ll be back to take another spin once I get my Xbox controller issue worked out. That may be an issue with this build, but I’ll research it a bit more.

But check out the video below to jump on board with me as we look around a tropical island in what looks like an old Honda CRX and then a 4×4 truck. First I hit the track, then the trees, then jump over some rocks, then drive off a cargo container before I put the truck in the drink and end up sleeping with the fishes. It was a good Monday drive and I enjoyed it, except for the sleeping with the fishes part.

If you want, you can download the Tech Demo from their site or you can put in $15 and get access to the alpha builds, the final game and of course the discussion forum. That’s some quality entertainment for $15, so why not jump on board and buy the full version. That way we’ll always have something to talk about.

BeamNG Drive available for download and purchase