Agenda

Pacific Drive is a game that defies description while managing to appeal to a broad audience. At its core, it's a survival-crafting game, but it's also not, because survival-crafting games don't really exist. Sure, Pacific Drive has survival and crafting, but thanks to sound survival fundamentals and a focus on theme, setting, and player fantasy, it leaves many of the usual trappings of survival games in its dust.

In this session, Seth Rosen (Game Director and Lead Designer) will lay out the fundamentals of survival gameplay he learned working on Don't Starve and dive into how they were applied in designing Pacific Drive's systems and structure. Through this dense and detailed look at what makes Pacific Drive tick, he will demonstrate how he avoided established formulas, look at how a taxonomy of survival experiences guided the design, and discuss the elements that step outside of traditional survival gameplay to offer a novel experience.

Takeaway

Attendees will learn the fundamentals of survival-crafting game design and how they manifest in Pacific Drive's systems and structure. They will also learn how sound fundamentals freed the team to move past tropes of the genre and offer a broadly-appealing and fresh experience focused on theme, setting, and player fantasy.

Intended Audience

This presentation is very dense: literacy with game design terminology and principles is expected. The presentation is intended for people of all disciplines interested in the design of Pacific Drive, and of survival gameplay generally. Developers, especially experienced designers, working on games within or adjacent to this space will benefit most.