About this project
As a special giveaway we're giving out a very early playable prototype created over 10 years ago. It's got tracks, it's got cars and a wee bit of FUN! Download the prototype and read more about it in our latest update. Enjoy!
Update #7: Racing on a dirt track with the Oculus Rift
Update #6: First gameplay video!
Update #5: Bugbear goes "retro flat-out"
Update #4: Got multiplayer?
Update #3: Autumn vibes
Update #2: Interview with the first preorderer
Update #1: Upgrading upgraded!
We're developing the game PC first. Based on your support we're also prepared to develop it for both or either of the next-gen consoles Xbox One and PS4. We're also ready to consider other platforms such as Mac or current-gen consoles. It's really up to you!
Did you love the over-the-top, reckless racing action of the FlatOut series? Or the ferocious wrecking fests of the Destruction Derby games? We did too! What if you could somehow relive those glorious moments, mixed with some serious Street Rod inspired vehicle upgrading and spiced up with fierce online races where players can battle it out with their tricked out bangers?
Now THAT would be something.
Over the years, we’ve been thinking about going back to our roots, and creating another high-octane racing game that would capture the spirit of over-the-top action and reckless racing as the legendary games of the past. For years, both Destruction Derby and FlatOut fans have been screaming for a comeback.
Now it’s the time, and we have some pretty exciting news for you. Our next racing game is going to bring those unforgettable moments up-to-date, and the best part of it all is that we want to make it with YOU!
We're developing a 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.
We've invested a lot of time into the development, and the game is already playable with many of the features implemented. Now we just need to take the game to the finish line, with all the experience and knowledge we have, with you guys at the wheel!
We've envisioned the game not being something that we get the funding for, finish and then just move on. We would rather keep on updating it, adding new features based on your feedback and and build it into an ultimate race experience.
We have already laid down 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.
We will go through the above features more thoroughly during our campaign and reveal some more we've already got cooking, but that is some of the core gameplay stuff that we thought would be cool in a game like this – we believe we're already in the ballpark, but now it's your turn to tell us what kind of awesome features YOU would like to see!
Mind you, Next Car Game is just a working title for us. As a matter of fact, our every game is referred internally as 'Next Car Game' or 'NCG' for short when we're developing the game. Since our efforts in coming up with a credible name were pretty rotten we will give you as a backer a unique chance to participate in choosing the final name for the game!
Our cars are old, cheap, banged up, patched together, rusty… just awesome! In short, our 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: we have already implemented fully deformable soft body car damage, meaning that the cars will react to damage in a very tangible, convincing way.
We’ve paid a lot of attention 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?
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!
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!
It’s actually very simple. This is not going to be a small game, and we have a lot of ambition on what Next Car Game could become. We’ve invested over one million dollars into the game already, and this would normally be the time when we go looking for a publisher to take us the rest of the way.
This time, however, we want to make the game that we want – the game that you want – not the game that a publisher wants. Making games costs some serious money, but if everything goes well, we’ll have a great, tight-knit community that’s going to support a lot of awesome content over the years.
The game will be released whatever the outcome of the Kickstarter campaign, but if the campaign is a success, we will get more people onboard and have a chance to create an even better game. Like said, we have pretty big plans, and the fans have already submitted a lot of requests that we'd love to make reality.
You might be also wondering why we’re launching a Kickstarter campaign since we already have our pre-order site open at nextcargame.com. The thing is that many of our fans have asked us for a Kickstarter, and we always wanted to do it. However, it turned out to be difficult for a Finnish studio, and it was only during our pre-order campaign that we finally found a way to make it a reality. So here we are, launching our campaign, largely thanks to our fans!
GET TO MAKE THIS GAME WITH US! We need YOUR help to create best possible demolition derby racing game, so we're planning on releasing the game step-by-step.
Play it. We will release a sneak peak technology demo right after our Kickstarter campaign so that you can see what we've been working on. The game is currently scheduled to be released spring 2014, but we’re going to release an early version of the game, and that’s going to be available to our early supporters only. You as an Early Access backer will take the wheel and help us shape the game into what you want. This gives you a unique opportunity to take part in the game development process and help develop a game that you want to play.
Support Us. By backing the game you help us make the game you deserve. Make no mistake about it, your support is absolutely vital to this game! We have decided to make this game without a publisher, but to do that we need to find the money elsewhere.
Doing the game with the fans gives us a lot more creative freedom, and you get to communicate DIRECTLY with the development team to make sure we’re making the all-out racing game that you want. By backing us now, you get to say your word on the design. Want a specific game mode? Don’t think your favorite car model is included? Let’s hear it! No compromises made for appealing to the mainstream – this one is for our dedicated fans.
A Great Deal. It’s a great deal that we want to give to our fans. By backing us you will get a chance to have a go at many neat options that are not going to be available later – custom cars and paint jobs, a chance to be featured in the game or listed in the credits. There are also digital extras like the soundtrack and exclusive wallpapers, some of which will not be available later.
Furthermore, we expect to build a great community around Next Car Game. Our early supporters are going to be its stars, and we’re going to make sure they’re recognized with special community badges.
Don't miss out your chance to create the game that you want!
We have a whole lot of really great rewards in store for our supporters, ranging from just the digital game and the sneak peak demo to a once-in-a-lifetime trip to Finland to meet Santa Claus! Please see here for the complete breakdown of the rewards:
We are going to deliver a complete game with a fully satisfying destruction racing experience even if we only meet our initial funding goal. However, given enough support from you, we are prepared to add new awesome content and features to the game, even develop the game for additional platforms. It’s all really up to you! Needless to say, all funding will be used toward developing the game.
Please see below for our current stretch goals. More stretch goals will be revealed during the campaign – we already have some pretty neat stuff planned out for you!
Bugbear Entertainment Ltd. is a game studio specializing in action driving. We come from Finland, the country that has given the gaming world the big daddies like Remedy, the developer of many highly acclaimed titles like Max Payne and Alan Wake; Rovio, the hatchery of beloved Angry Birds; and most recently Supercell, the creator of mobile sensations Clash of Clans and Hayday. Finland is also the home of Santa Claus, sauna and northern lights!
We’ve been making car games for thirteen years, starting with Rally Trophy (2001, PC). With over a decade of development under its belt, Bugbear Entertainment Ltd. has successfully redefined the genre of action racing. We are best known for the critically acclaimed demolition derby racing series FlatOut (2004-2007, PC, PS2, Xbox, Xbox 360) and street racing title Ridge Racer Unbounded (2013, PC, PS3, Xbox 360).
Risks and challenges
We at Bugbear have a long track-record of making high-octane racing games, and we know that we can pull it through with your support. We’ve been making racing games for over 13 years, and this is our tenth game. We’re recreating a type of experience we've already shipped three times on four different platforms, so we do know what we’re doing.
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Funding period
- (30 days)