Pacific Drive is a supernatural survival game that was released last year. Show rights for the game have been recently purchased by Atomic Monster.
Courtesy of Ironwood Studios
Last year, Seattle-based Ironwood Studios released their debut video game. It’s called Pacific Drive, a calm, yet eerie supernatural adventure set in the Olympic Peninsula.
It’s also a survival game that has players investigate supernatural happenings and try to escape the unknown in a fully customizable station wagon. The award-nominated game recently had the show rights acquired by film and television production company Atomic Monster, which is owned by James Wan. The director and producer is known for his work on “Saw,” “The Conjuring” and other hit horror movies and TV shows.
Cassandra Dracott is the CEO and creative director at Ironwood Studios. She grew up in Portland and says family road trips and long drives helped inspire the creation of Pacific Drive, while the Pacific Northwest landscape shaped the tone and feel of the story.
“You have the sense of being humbled by the scale around you, being humbled by all these mountains and by all of these massive vistas. But at the same time, it’s mysterious because you can’t see very far; you can’t see around that next turn,” she said. “Those two combined to make being humbled by something mysterious, which can easily translate to fear of the unknown, and I think it’s a perfect setting.”
Creative Director Cassandra Dracott says creating a game that is both relaxing and tension filled relies on balancing stressful moments in-game and the peaceful planning time players have in their garage.
Courtesy of Ironwood Studios
Players face no combat while on the road, but instead have a goal of gathering materials, surviving anomalies and trying to race back to their garage to prepare for the next trip. Much of the game centers around the player and the relationship they have with their car, an old station wagon.
Dracott says the choice of car comes from her own experiences with her family’s station wagons.
“It ended up fitting really well because it’s both an Americanized, old woody wagon that is a part of the Americana that we use to connect the player to the weirdness of the zone, but it’s also adaptable,” she said. “Going back to old station wagon ads of the ‘80’s – it’s for the family, it could go camping, you can put stuff in it, it’s still a good car, it’s very fancy.”
Dracott says that a station wagon just felt like the right vehicle, noting ads of the '80's that marketed the vehicle as being adaptable, just what players need when exploring the weirdness Pacific Drive.
Courtesy of Ironwood Studios
The vehicle can also encounter maintenance quirks and the usual set of automotive challenges, which Dracott says is her favorite part of the game. Dracott and her production team researched car troubles people routinely face and incorporated them into the game. From unintentional car honks to hoods popping open unexpectedly, this inanimate companion begins to have a mind of its own.
“All of a sudden, when you pop your door, the horn honks and your right door opens. … And it does this amazing thing of building more character into this vehicle because we really wanted you to have that relationship. It was such a special thing,” she said.
Pacific Drive is available to download on PS5 and PC.
Cassandra Dracott spoke to “Think Out Loud” host Dave Miller. You can listen to the full conversation here: