Surviving Survival: From Don’t Starve to Pacific Drive and Beyond

What makes a survival game? What makes a survival game stand out in a crowded marketplace? Drawing on his expertise from working on various Don’t Starve things and on Pacific Drive, in this session Seth will cover the fundamentals of survival design, discussing the essential ingredients and design patterns that make these experiences tick. He will then demonstrate how this strong foundation allowed Pacific Drive to succeed by stepping outside of survival tropes to offer something familiar-yet-fresh, through an approach that prioritizes theme, setting, and player fantasy over established formulas of the genre—the best way to make a good survival game is to not make a Survival Game.