Wreckfest, Bugbear's (FlatOut) next car game catch-all

GREAT GOOGLEY-MOOGLEY.

Next Car Game (working title), Bugbear's community-funded follow-up to their FlatOut series, has a video and it's smashtacular. Jlaakso, take it away...

Out on PC in 2014, but if they hit 10,000 pre-orders, pre-orderers will get an early access alpha. What are you waiting for? Look at that metal crunch!

I wonder if there's any chance of self-publishing on Xbone/PS4, or is it way too early to say?

Start "why not Kickstarter?" discussion ... now!

garion333 wrote:

Start "why not Kickstarter?" discussion ... now!

Why give Kickstarter money when you think you can raise it on your own?

Edit: Bring it to consoles and it's day one for me.

Edit 2: When I say console, I mean anything that has Sony's name on it.

Great job, jlaakso, and good luck with the game.

garion333 wrote:

Start "why not Kickstarter?" discussion ... now!

According to a commenter on RPS, "Finnish laws do not allow asking for donations for commercial reasons", so Kickstarter wouldn't have been allowed.

I've written some couple of hundred of these messages to everybody asking since Friday night... here goes:

Kickstarter: we very much wanted to do a Kickstarter but there is no way to do it legally from Finland, where we're based. You would need to set up a separate company in the US and basically funnel all the money through there. Even then the taxation might be a problem and there's at least one case in Finland where all the crowd-raised money has been withheld by the authorities. When you ask the taxman how we should go about it, they basically say that they have no idea and might just withhold everything in any case. Ugh. We're still looking it, though, and if we can clear all the hurdles, then that's going to happen.

Consoles: we really want to be on the consoles and with the next-gen being much more indie friendly, it's likely. That said, we're focused on the Windows PC for now and all other platforms are being discussed. Please be vocal about what platforms you'd be interested in, we are paying attention. (The cries for a PS4 version have outperformed our expectations.)

On the whole, though, obviously from a financial point it just makes sense to sell the game direct. We're making a lot of profit (as a percentage) on every single copy sold. So we're hoping that's going to support us far enough.

Coming up: demo version(s), Steam Greenlight, more payment options, more tiers (surprisingly many have been asking for 100 USD+ tiers).

We're very happy indeed with the reception! All the major blogs and sites are into it. Obviously I'm happy to answer all questions here!

Congrats jlaakso on your new YouTube fame. I've scaled back my contributions to Kickstarters substantially of late and normally, crowdfunding from non-Kickstarter/Indiegogo sites make me nervous but you're a long-time Goodjer and also, I love your team's games (Ridge Racer Unbounded was the first Ridge Racer branded title I liked) so I'll be pitching in. This title looks amazing and my brain had a total nostalgia spasm when you mentioned Street Rod! I gotta' find a way to do a Retro Flashback on that soon! Good luck!

Thank you for your trust!
I'm now the face on this project and with the succesful card game IndieGoGo (Audatia: http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/au...) we're running with friends, I feel like I owe a lot to friends near and far... Seeing a couple of friends commit for several hundred dollars feels like a much bigger weight than hundreds of strangers putting their faith on you.

We've going for a remake of our first big hit, the original FlatOut (1). That sort of down to earth, dirty racing, with no flashy showroom cars in sight.

So cool.

Now on Steam Greenlight, too: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfile...

Voted! And the rest of you should too!

Whoah, the Greenlight is going really well! I don't think it's common to get through 30% of the way to the top 100 in a matter of hours, with 90% saying "yes"... Excited to see how it'll turn out.

I said yes AND favorited!

Damn, been active since Nov. 1 and we're just finding out now!

I wonder if the lack of a title is hurting it in terms of getting the word out.

And the Kickstarter's been canceled. The goal was not going to be reached, so they're focusing on their Early Access program:

Bugbear wrote:

We Finns are not used to giving up so easily, and we are hell-bent to keep on developing the game with our supporters, shaping it into something that no racing game fan can afford to pass. We have this thing called sisu in Finnish, meaning strength of will, and we’re counting on that each of you have a bit of sisu in you!

But as a thank you, all supporters get access to this playable tech demo:

Dat shredder.

Gravey wrote:

And the Kickstarter's been canceled. The goal was not going to be reached, so they're focusing on their Early Access program

It's good to hear that they're going ahead with development.

This example is another reason why I recently decided to no longer throw my money at video game kickstarters. More often than not, when a KS doesn't reach its goal (or in this case, cancelled because it cleary wasn't going to), the developer simply sets up their own funding/pre-order system. And these days, if a developer has a playable build, they have the funding option of putting it on Steam Early Access. For games that are going to get made regardless, this is the funding option I have chosen to use from now on. Even better is the fact that Early Access games can go on sale.

Stinks the KS didn't get them where they needed to be, but from that video it's clear to me jlaakso and team are doing god's work.

Got my pre-order in the second day their campaign was running. I haven't tried out the early access demo yet but dat video! I really hope they can finish this.

I'm not with Bugbear anymore (my new home is over here) and can't really speak for the team, but I'm really glad that people can now play around with the car test track! It's a lot of fun.

The KS was a bit of a mystery... we thought about it in terms of added exposure, but the worry was always that perhaps our kind of crowd just wasn't on KS. We know the fans are out there, but reaching them without a finished product is the issue. Certainly the Youtube exposure that comes with the playable demo should help.

When did that happen? Regardless, congrats on being at Remedy. Wanna tell us what the hell you guys are working on besides Quantum Break? You know, that next Alan Wake game, right?

Thanks, it's been fantastic! I switched a little over a month ago. I'm not working on Quantum Break; we have a smaller digital team that's working on iOS, and I'm starting a new game with them. It's more secretive than QB, actually, so might take a while until you hear about it.

The early access version is available now. There's three tracks (tarmac, gravel, derby), two cars, and AI events between 1/2/12/24 racers. Liking it a lot, myself, really feels like what the "next-gen FlatOut experience" is supposed to be.

Awesome.

Some pre-alpha gameplay footage. I'm liking what I see.

I need to get in on this.

I'm really worried the next ten of games are going to overdue particle effects, but so far this looks like a good amount without being overdone.

Early access available on Steam - $24.99

Deluxe Edition - $34.99

Digital Deluxe Edition
Buy the Digital Deluxe Edition and get a lot of great, exclusive content!

Backer Race Car
A special in-game race car that's not going to available later!
Wallpapers
A set of cool wallpapers to trick out your desktop in style.
Soundtrack
A rocking soundtrack of the game.
Please note that the extra content will be available at a later date.

I was just coming here to post this. I see a few people have all ready picked it up on Steam and I look forward to hear what they say.

Back in the mid-90's one of my favorite games to play was Destruction Derby (I'm pretty sure I even still have the box and discs for that actually) and when I saw this pop up on Steam today it brought back a lot of awesome memories of that game.

I bought a wheel for ETS2 and I've been itching to find another use for it. This looks like it might be it.

Looks awesome, but some of those cars in the video should not have been moving the way they looked.

PS. I loved Destruction Derby on PS1

I played the early access thing and the tech demo playground and I have thoughts.

Mostly about how I'm a sucker for destruction models in games and should really temper my enthusiasm a bit.
I will need to run a couple more rounds of the demo derby map, but so far there seems very little actual correlation between where you hit or get hit and the effect it has on car handling. In the round I played I made it to the last two cars and both of us were smoking wrecks, circling each other at high speeds in reverse. Crazy high speeds for the kinds of hits those cars were dishing.

Maybe I'm a bit jaded because I've been bouncing between Carmageddon I and II for the past few weeks. Surprisingly technical traction, weight, damage models in those games.