Hello, everyone! It’s been a couple of months since Pacific Drive has launched and I wanted to take moment reach out and give an update from Ironwood Studios! First and foremost, thank you everyone for helping to make the release of Pacific Drive as special as it was. As a studio, we’ve seen so much positivity around the game, and it fills our hearts! It’s been so exciting to see the online community grow, so many new Breachers connecting with their station wagon, and even a physical release! After almost 5 years of development, the launch of Pacific Drive on February 22nd marked the culmination of a monumental effort, but also the start of the next chapter for the team and the game, which is what I’m here to talk about today. Since launch, we’ve updated the game with multiple rounds of bug fixes, perf improvements, and quality of life features. We shipped a flurry of these patches in the immediate wake of launch, and as you may have noticed, the cadence of these updates has gone down recently. Why’s that? Well, we’re turning our attention to the future of Pacific Drive — we’re still making these kinds of improvements, but we’re working on other exciting stuff, too! I mentioned earlier that it’s a new chapter for the team: the main change is that now that the game is released (and thank you again to all of the wonderful support), we can afford to slow down a little bit. After years of development and the busy-ness that comes with launching a game, we’re taking a breath and making sure that everyone on the team gets some well-deserved time off to rest and recover. We’re very fortunate to be in a position where we’re able to do this, and we owe a huge thanks to all of you for helping us get there! We’re also entering a new chapter for the game: as people are taking breaks, the team is shifting gears to a more sustainable pace of development and getting to work on a series of free content updates for Pacific Drive! Over the coming months, we’ll be building and releasing new content and features for the game, and in each one of these updates, we plan on featuring one larger improvement to the game, and alongside it will come more of the same bug fixes, etc. that you’re familiar with from our earlier patches. We’re really excited about what we’ve got in store and appreciate your patience as our cadence of updates settles into this new pattern: each update will be further apart, which gives us time to make sure each one is offering something meaningful and exciting for players old and new. The first of these content updates is in progress and coming soon! While it’s in the spirit of the game to not unravel the mystery of what it contains to early, I can safely say that it brings at least one new thing that personally, I absolutely can’t stop playing with. As someone with a background in technical art, and who was also responsible for the outdoor lighting and atmospherics of Pacific Drive, it’s created a wonderful distraction that I have to regularly resist playing with it in order to stay focused and do my part alongside the rest of the team to get it wrapped up and into your hands. 🙂 In the meantime, we didn’t want to wait to push a smaller update to the game which is out today. With it, you’ll have two brand new decal kits to choose from that feature some pretty cool new looks! First is the Year of The Dragon decal kit. With the dragon’s metallic gold design and accompanying ornamentation, hopefully this year’s Chinese Zodiac brings luck and good fortune to all your upcoming trips out into the Olympic Exclusion Zone. [img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/43621109/66f2cd4ec8fbf11205af4400e087ccf5ff700c07.png[/img] Teased back in February, the second decal kit coming today features art from ULTROS, a stylish metroidvania game made by our friends at Hadoque. This glowing neon decal features some of the psychedelic designs from the Sarcophagus, the cosmic garden where the game takes place. [img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/43621109/91a4a0e0430a192e64b4acfafe46ab0ad818459a.png[/img] I hope that this message gives everyone a glimpse behind the scenes of what we’re up to and a look into what the future will bring. From myself and all the folks on the Ironwood team, thank you to everyone and until next time! Best, Alex Dracott Creative Director