Software:Pacific Drive (video game)

Short description: Upcoming video game

Pacific Drive
Developer(s)	Ironwood Studios
Publisher(s)	Kepler Interactive
Director(s)	Alexander Dracott
Producer(s)	Alyssa Askew
Designer(s)	Seth Rosen
Programmer(s)	Zak Blystone
Artist(s)	Larry Vargas
Writer(s)	Karrie Shao
Composer(s)	Wilbert Roget II
Engine	Unreal Engine 4
Platform(s)	PlayStation 5 Windows
Release	February 22, 2024
Genre(s)	Survival
Mode(s)	Single-player

Pacific Drive is an upcoming survival game developed by Ironwood Studios and published by Kepler Interactive. The game is set in the Pacific Northwest, which the player traverses on foot or in a station wagon as they attempt to find a way to escape. The game uses a first-person perspective; the player must attempt to avoid metal monsters which latch onto their car. The vehicle can be repaired and customized at the player's garage.

Development of Pacific Drive began in 2019 after the founding of Ironwood Studios. Creative director Alexander Dracott conceived the idea while driving through the Olympic Peninsula. He considered creating the game independently but soon realized he would need a team, which he began building during the COVID-19 pandemic. The game was announced in September 2022, and is scheduled to release for the PlayStation 5 and Windows in February 2024.

Gameplay

Pacific Drive is a survival game played from a first-person perspective. The game is set in the Olympic Exclusion Zone in the Pacific Northwest, which the player traverses on foot or in a station wagon. The player can customize their vehicle in their garage, which acts as their base of operations. Vehicle diagnostics are carried out using a headset; the car will occasionally develop quirks to be repaired, such as the horn sounding when the wheel is turned.

Some repairs can be performed while traversing the world, such as swapping flat tires and mending with a blowtorch, though complex repairs are handled in the garage. The garage's Inventing Station harvests resources and creates machines, including some that discover new routes, add fuel to the car, and destabilize a zone. A buzzsaw can be used to harvest scrap metal from other wrecked vehicles. Weather elements alter the vehicle's handling.

As the player traverses the world, metal monsters will latch onto their car and chew at the metal; they can be removed with the buzzsaw. Other obstacles include electrical anomalies and barriers that disrupt the player's electronics. Additional locations become available to the player as they continue their journey. Throughout their travels, they can discover crafting recipes and blueprints to improve their vehicle, and find notes, audio logs, and communicate with non-player characters to escape the Olympic Exclusion Zone. In each level, the player collects energy cores to open gateways, which returns them to their garage; doing so makes the world more hostile, setting off enemies and starting a destructive storm which will eventually envelop the player.

Development and release

After working at video game development studios like Sony Online Entertainment, Sucker Punch Productions, and Oculus VR, Alexander Dracott founded Seattle-based Ironwood Studios in 2019 to create his own video games. He conceived the concept of Pacific Drive while driving through the Olympic Peninsula; he felt driving through the Pacific Northwest "on a lonely road ... and the radio is playing a certain tune, it can be really memorable", comparing it to his childhood in Portland, Oregon . As he began developing a prototype of Pacific Drive, Dracott considered remaining solo but realized he would need a team as the concept began to grow. He began building the team at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020; they moved in to their Seattle office in 2022.

The team wanted the player's relationship with their car to be the most important factor of gameplay; lead game designer Seth Rosen said "the car's health is generally a better indicator of how a run is going than your own health". They attempted scripted moments of "character building" for the vehicle but determined unscripted gameplay resonated better with the player. The team designed enemies and events with simplistic behaviors independently, and more interesting scenarios when combined. They wanted enemies to be "pretty dangerous" but still allow the player to solve problems creatively while overcoming threats. Initial experiments of enemies controlled through artificial intelligence were scrapped as their behavior was too difficult to read while driving. The randomization of the world was inspired by Derek Yu's work on Spelunky and his subsequent book for Boss Fight Books. The game is built using the game engine Unreal Engine 4.

Pacific Drive was announced on September 13, 2022, during PlayStation's State of Play presentation, alongside its debut trailer. It was originally scheduled to release for the PlayStation 5 and Windows in 2023. A gameplay trailer was released on February 9, 2023. In June, Ironwood Studios announced it had partnered with Kepler Interactive to publish the game. In August, the release window was delayed to early 2024 to allow for additional development without excessive overworking. A story trailer was featured at the PC Gaming Show in November, revealing the release date of February 22, 2024.