Bugbear don’t have the rights to make FlatOut games anymore. In their absence developer duties were handed to Team 6 Game Studios (with disastrous results). Bugbear want to make another car game about smashing together engines wrapped in deformable metal, though.
Currently only called Next Car Game, Bugbear have released a pitch to their community to fund the game’s development.
It looks pretty smashing.
Next Car Game looks a good deal like the previous FlatOut games. The real changes are going on under the hood. While the engine looks prettier than previous games it’s also providing a more comprehensive physics simulation which should feed back into your car’s handling.
For the first time in the series you’ll be able to build your own car, too. Picking from different parts and paint jobs you’ll be able to build your own banger to smash to bits on the race track.
Something I’m wary of though is their funding platform. Rather than use Kickstarter or Indiegogo, Bugbear are taking pledges through their site as a form of preorders. They have no set funding target or indicator showing how much money they’ve made already. There doesn’t seem to be any guarantee of what the studio will do should they not receive enough money to develop the game they want to.
Backing the project at this stage could be a risky proposition. Though Bugbear claim that backers will have access to the game’s alpha before Christmas and, if they hit 10,000 backers, they’ll release a demo to those that have pledged support.