New AAA quality demolition derby themed racing game with special attention paid to soft-body damage modeling, sophisticated driving dynamics and in-depth vehicle upgrading, featuring both demolition derbies and more traditional track races.
If you’re familiar with the original FlatOut experience, you already know what we’re aiming at, only this time we’re upping the ante on almost every front. It’s all about the stuff that really matters: cool cars, varied tracks and the signature once-in-the-lifetime moments that can be achieved only with true-to-life physics simulation.
Some of the core features, such as:
- Race in both demolition derbies and traditional track races.
- Build your dream rides by buying bangers and their parts.
- Have your own garage where you work with your rides.
- Challenge the world in wide variety of multiplayer modes.
Multiplayer will be an integral part of Next Car Game, and we’re committed to implement it the way it should be done, of course listening to your feedback. Multiplayer will be available for both derbies and track races, our starting point being that derbies will always offer you a chance to have a fun, quick match to let go of steam by bending some sheet metal, while track races are a perfect way to test your upgraded ride and skills against other players.
Mind you, Next Car Game is just a working title. As a matter of fact, every game is referred internally as 'Next Car Game' or 'NCG' for short when we're developing the game.
Cars are old, cheap, banged up, patched together, rusty… just awesome! In short, cars ooze with style, and you won’t find anything like them in other racing games. But it's not all rust and falling off paint, either! You will get a chance to upgrade your banger ride into a formidable track weapon.
The cars will be inspired by real cars, and we’re going to have a whole lot of variety as well: everyone loves the old American heavy-hitters from the muscle car era, but we’re not neglecting the fun little European cars from the long-gone decades either. Since variation is the spice of life and our game, we'd also very much like to add a third region, but what could it be? YOU DECIDE!
Below you can find examples of the car models of American and European regions. Note that both models, while rendered offline here, are exactly the same we are using in-game, so you can get some idea of the level of detail we're going for.
We’re not going be satisfied with the cars having only visual differences - that would be quite a party-pooper, wouldn't it? Thanks to our sophisticated vehicle physics engine, we can faithfully replicate each car’s signature characteristics.
As a result, a peppery European rear-wheel drive hatchback with a rear-mounted engine will drive completely different to a heavy American sedan equipped with a powerful front-mounted engine, meaning that there’ll be a lot of room for different play styles and always plenty to discover.
And it gets even better: Ther's already fully deformable soft body car damage implemented, meaning that the cars will react to damage in a very tangible, convincing way.
A lot of attention is paid on how real cars behave in collisions, and trust us, when the going gets tough, the metal will bend, twist and break like never before – imagine all this with a total of twelve cars fighting it out on the same derby track, with full soft body damage! And thanks to some clever optimization, all this is possible without a super computer.
To top everything off, the damage is not simply a visual gimmick: as a result the driving dynamics will change in a realistic fashion. What’s also neat is that damage is completely location-based – for example a high-speed collision at the front might cause one of the front wheels being dislocated, resulting in pretty hairy maneuverability. Imagine the sort of tactical element all this adds especially to the demolition derbies!
Perhaps the best part is that you’ll be spending a lot of time taking your dream rides apart and building them back up again in your garage. The garage will be your home base very much like in games such as World of Tanks or Warthunder. We’ve also been inspired by Street Rod, a legendary racing game from the gone era that did a wonderful job of making you feel like your dream car that you worked on in your garage was something unique.
When you start out in the game, you’re on a pretty tight budget and have to settle for an old beater as your first ride. By winning races and earning money you get to upgrade the car and start building it into a track monster of your dreams. You can spend your money freely on whatever you want to and swap out engine parts, transmission or suspension, even transplant the whole engine if you want to!
Eventually you will have money to buy another car, in which case you could have one completely tricked-out race beast and another one for derbies that you've put together from leftover junk parts!
Being car guys ourselves, we aren’t going to be satisfied with just any kind of upgrading, we want to do it properly. Mechanical parts will have an effect mimicking their real-life counterparts, but we’re paying special attention to making sure you’ll get a grip of the wrench even if you’re not too much into car tinkering – we’ll turn you into a gearhead in no time!
And if you’d prefer to keep your hands nice and clean, that’s alright as well, since we’ll put in pre-designed upgrade sets to make upgrading a breeze.
In the classic Street Rod style you’ll be buying parts from the classifieds, the in-game store where you can buy and sell cars and their parts. Need more horsepower on a budget? No problem, scour the classifieds for a bargain supercharger – just remember that a cheap bargain find might not withstand too much punishment.
We’re also thinking about neat little surprises for the classifieds, such as limited time specials, blowout offers or collectible super rare parts that might just give you bragging rights and an edge on the track!
A cool car game needs cool tracks, and we’re poised to deliver. We've spent a lot of time to make sure we can deliver an immersive derby and racing experience, and we use a lot of effort to design the tracks to ensure maximum impact throughout the track. We're also constantly constantly working on new track ideas, and now we just need your ideas - where would YOU like to race?
Derby Arena's
Derbies will mostly take place on closed arenas that will encourage close quarter car-to-car combat with not too many spots to hide in. We already have a few types of derby arenas completed and we're always thinking about new ones: how about a large, open multiplayer battle arena that would bring a more tactical combat element into the game? Sounds awesome to us, but let us know what you think!
Race Tracks
Track races will take place on a wide variety of environments: run-down racing tracks and sun-drenched sandpits are some of the locations that we have already planned. Our tracks will reflect the nature of the game, so they will have a plenty of bumps, fast and tight corners as well as specific choke points to make sure there's almost always someone near you that you can ram.
Also, the environments will be more dynamic than ever before, meaning that barrels, stacks of tires and splinters of wood will be flying through the air when you battle it out for the mastery of the track.
To be honest, we can't wait to show you what we can do with today's hardware – in our previous games we’ve put thousands of dynamic objects on the track, but now we can put a ton of flying metal and dirt in the air at any given time, and we certainly will!
Our in-house ROMU engine is a hell-bent beast that's precision-engineered for high-speed, breakneck racing. It’s all about heavy metal going way too fast, crashing into stuff, and getting all trashed up just because it’s fun.
While we're focused on action, we also want to reach the level of motorsporting authenticity of games like Forza Motorsport and Gran Turismo. To that end our engine is simulating vehicle dynamics in a very sophisticated fashion. Rolling resistances, casters and slip angles are definitely not ancient Greek to us, and you as the player will be the one benefiting from our expertise.
While we care about physics, we sure haven't forgotten that the game should be first and foremost fun. The game is easy to get to grips with even if you're not a hardcore gamer, while it will offer a lot of depth to those wanting to experience the most authentic racing experience.
Thanks to precise vehicle physics, you’ll always receive plausible feedback on what your car is doing. You’ll feel the little bumps on the track, the weight of your car transferring when you go over them – and most certainly you’ll feel it when you’re being dealt some damage!
Even though we know our physics, we don't know what kind of gameplay you'd prefer, and to that end we're making sure you get to say your word on vehicle tuning as well. Are the driving dynamics too arcade? Or too realistic? Let us hear your opinion and make it count!
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