The Beaten Track playtest

About The Beaten Track

The Beaten Track is a relaxed off-road exploration game. Take an old, loaded-up 4x4 across an endless, procedurally generated land: meadows and autumn woods, winding rivers and mountain passes, and further out deserts, jungles, snowy tundra, volcanic fields and the sea.

Nothing points the way. Pick a hill, look over it, and see what's in the next valley. Somewhere out there, hidden campsites are waiting to be found, and you're not the only one looking.

An endless world to discover

• Every world grows from a seed: rivers that wind for kilometers, waterfalls that thunder into deep pools, canyons with ramps out, natural stone arches and mountains worn into ravines.
• Glaciers and frozen waterfalls in the far north, table mountains and red rock arches in the desert, deep blue sinkholes in the jungle, and old volcanoes with lakes in their craters.
• Rocky coasts and long beaches, where the sea rolls in and breaks on the sand.
• Caves wind deep under the mountains. Find the way through, and if you're the first out the other side, the cave carries the name you give it.
• A soft, painterly low-poly look: warm light, cool shadows and hills fading into the haze.
• Fish leap at the waterfalls, rivers run milky below glaciers and tea-brown from bogs, and the water parts around your wheels.
• Your map only shows where you've been, so every drive fills in a little more of it.

No roads. Only challenges.

Your truck is slow, heavy and stubborn, and the land doesn't make it easy. Shift into low range to crawl up steep slopes and over rocks and ledges, ford rivers at the shallow spots (or flood the engine trying), plough through mud, deep snow and soft sand, and hunt for the one ramp out of a canyon. When the wheels give up, hook the winch onto a tree or a rock and pull yourself out. Your tires leave real tracks that deepen into ruts, and your truck gets caked in mud, dust or snow, until the next river or rain shower rinses it off.

Find a hidden campsite. Name it. Claim it.

Campsites are rare, and nothing on screen marks them. You learn to spot them: an open clearing, a striking landmark, dancing lights, the sound of the place coming alive. Drive into the middle, give it a name and make camp: once its first load of planks is in, the tents go up. From then on it's on the map with your name, your city and your flag, and you can travel back to it whenever you like.

• Many kinds of campsite and landmark, from an old giant tree and a stone circle to hidden falls, a sea arch and a frozen pond.
• Everyone who drives in later sees who discovered it, and as the camp grows, its finder earns a share of what is spent there.

Haul, build and earn

Here and there a crate lies out in the land, glowing softly and humming to itself. Load it up and bring it to any camp to cash it in. A golden one is worth far more, but everyone nearby can hear you carrying it, and a crate is only yours once you've brought it in.

Every camp is a village with room to grow. Pick a spot around it, put down a shop, a sawmill or a quarry, and the planks and stone it needs become contracts for any driver. Take one at a contract board, load up at a sawmill or a quarry in the pickup, and haul it in before the time runs out: the farther the haul, the more it pays. Once your shop stands, a share of everything it sells is yours, also while you're off exploring, and every load hauled from your sawmill or quarry earns you a share too.

Spend your credits at the shops: more pull, tougher tyres, brighter lamps and colored headlights that other drivers see at night. In Base Camp, drive into the garage to pick your truck (the old wagon, the pickup with its open bed, or the light and quick Explorer) and dress it up with paints, liveries and decals. Next door, the Map Store sells maps of the land around, and treasure maps: find the spot, and pull the chest out of the ground with your winch.

Storms roll in. Night falls.

A full day passes in 48 minutes, on one clock shared by every player. Watch the sun set over the hills, drive by headlight under the stars and a full moon, and get caught in valley fog, drizzle, thunderstorms, sandstorms, blizzards or hail. Rain soaks the ground, snow settles on everything, and every climate has weather of its own. With some luck a rainbow follows the shower, or the northern lights ripple over the snow.

One shared world

Everyone who plays the same world drives in the same land. No lobby, no log-in: just start driving.

• Meet other drivers out in the land: drive side by side, honk, give a stuck truck a push.
• Camps made by others appear on your map. Drive in, and their tents are already standing.
• Make camp together: everyone nearby joins in.
• Lay out a trail of your own, gate by gate, and other drivers race your time. Every driver who finishes it earns you credits.
• Every tire counts. Where many drive, a track is born: the grass flattens, the ground wears down and real paths appear across the land.

No connection? Keep driving. Your tracks and camps are shared as soon as you're back online.

Features

• An endless, procedurally generated off-road world
• Day-night cycle and dynamic weather, shared by all players
• Hidden campsites to discover, name and claim, with travel between camps
• Caves to find your way through, and to name
• Your own shops, sawmills and quarries that earn you credits from every sale and every load
• A winch for when the wheels give up
• Three trucks to choose from, with upgrades, paints, liveries, decals and colored headlights
• Treasure maps to hunt down, and maps of the land to buy
• Trails to lay out and race, with records to beat
• Shared trails, camps and live drivers in one world, or play offline
• Photo mode and a cinematic camera that finds its own shots of your truck
• Over a hundred achievements and world leaderboards
• A soundtrack that follows the land and the time of day, with music of its own for rare moments
• Keyboard or controller, with remappable controls, and HDR on screens that support it

From the game's Steam page.