In last month's Post Masters Update, we shared some details on the core concept of what to expect from your role as PACS couriers. This month, we’re excited to tease what that world will look like and how we aim to present it!
The PACS Concept
At its core, PACS is a post-apocalyptic game. This setting is our central pillar, and we want to faithfully present our vision of this world to players visually across user interface, 3D art, shaders, visual effects and the rest.
Set in a 1980’s cassette futurist world with an analogue/CRT aesthetic, civilization has advanced its technological capabilities beyond that which the world's climate can endure. Spoiler alert: this global environmental collapse, causes an apocalypse, destroying society (and delivery services) as we know it.. The world of PACS is gritty and difficult. Unkempt, overgrown, and left behind by humanity, the environment has been reclaimed by the elements and nature, making a post-apocalypse delivery service especially challenging to manage.
As we develop the world and gameplay experiences, we’re always considering “Does this feel post-apocalyptic enough?” before we commit to any ideas. Sometimes it’s too post-apocalyptic, others not enough, so we have a balance to strike in how we bring this concept to life.
Influences and Inspirations
We’ve had no shortage of visual and written references to help us understand how to build a gripping and immersive post-apocalyptic world. From classic films like Bladerunner through to non-fiction books such as The World Without Us, there is a lot for us to learn from. Then of course, we have plenty of games to draw inspiration from, helping us convey this post-apocalyptic world, and the many gameplay elements that couriers will carry out within it.
Games like Spintires and the Mudrunner series have given us great reference for challenging the player in their traversal of a world with vehicles, while The Long Drive and more recently Pacific Drive for how players interact with those vehicles. Then Lethal Company or Content Warning give us brilliant examples of how to embrace the co-operative elements of gameplay and inject them into the core loop of the game.
While all of these references and more have been studied and drawn from as we develop the tone and visual style of the game, PACS is its own game. Our challenge is making sure PACS is a unique overgrown world that still captures the urban decay of climate disaster, and facilitates the gameplay features and experience we intend for players. We’ll share more about that in a future Post Masters update!
One reference we cannot go without mentioning, is Simon Stållenhag’s collection of incredible artwork, more specifically The Labyrinth and The Electric State collections that give us amazing depictions of a discarded hyper-consumerist society.
Depicting the Apocalypse
We want the world of PACS to feel real and be unique in its style, something players can look at and instantly recognize as our world. To achieve this we have been focusing heavily on atmosphere, colour, and silhouette, to define the game’s visual style as opposed to high resolution photo scanned textures or hyper realistic rendering. Whilst Unreal Engine out of the box is stunning, it does tend to lend itself to a certain visual style which over the years has become somewhat of a trope.
With PACS we aim to push away from that standard visual style and have been hard at work adapting UE5’s rendering pipeline and experimenting with rendering features, colour space settings, and shading to build a visual style for the game that is not only unique but positively oozing with character in a world that feels real to itself.
Our focus is on how this style makes you feel, how it tugs at your nerves, dares you to risk that next corner, or the path you’ve not yet taken. A world full of depth and intrigue that truly invites immersive exploration.
The Courier Character
Developing a stand out character is never an easy feat. Almost all characters that stay with us and pull at our heartstrings years after have one key thing in common. Silhouette. Characters that even as just a blank silhouette you could pick out of a lineup every time from every angle. With that in mind we are delighted to show off an early iteration of our player character.
We’ve tried to shoot for something that feels grounded in a post-apocalyptic world and also as a courier & professional driver. We also didn’t want to be too realistic, this is a game about delivering packages in the post-apocalypse after all!
We’re proud to present… you: someone with slight whimsical tones and a strong silhouette.
The kind of character that gets up to all sorts of mischief and cackles madly at dying in ways beyond our pre-apocalyptic human comprehension. Something expressive whilst still being masked, and that lends to a feeling that anyone or anything could be behind it.
We hope you will all have a lot of fun with PACS, and fun is definitely something we’ve tried to embrace with the character. What do you think about your future courier character?
Interfacing With the World
As we developed the UI, we gravitated towards a style that fits naturally within the cassette futurist direction and should feel familiar to those who enjoy the post apocalyptic setting in games!
The idea that these chunky analogue devices and machines with iconic CRT green text and framing carry out functions that seem beyond their technical ability was always a fun concept for us.
To make the interfaces feel authentic and consistent, we’ve tried to act within the constraints that old monochrome CRT displays had by avoiding using curved lines, instead preferring to use polygonal lines or more boxy designs.
While we wanted to remain authentic to the iconic monochrome green, we felt like the occasional use of colour would be important for making elements stand out for positive and negative reinforcement in gameplay. For that reason, we tried to stick to a green, amber and red colour scheme whenever possible.
Below is an early concept from pre-production, of what a business overview screen might look like following this visual style.
Another feature we wanted to have to sell the cassette futurist vibe was having diegetic UI (UI rendered on monitors and devices around the world instead of overlaid on screen). Cassette futurism is all about big, boxy machines, so we couldn’t pass up an opportunity to render our game’s UI on them!
Next Update
The Next Post Masters update will be looking at some of the world building we’ve been doing and what kind of tools we’re using to create an immersive experience for all you couriers to explore and traverse.
FAQ
If you have any questions you’d like answered, join our community Discord!
Here’s some answers to questions we’ve heard so far:
Will there be different sizes of vehicles? Yes! We’re aiming to have a nice variety of vehicle shapes and sizes!
Will friends be able to ride as passengers in my vehicle? Yep! Don’t forget to call shotgun though!
Will there be a survival system? Yes! The game will feature survival systems like hunger, thirst, radiation and more as the game is developed throughout early access. We’ll touch on this in a future blog.