Bugbear Entertainment was famous for FlatOut 1 & 2, arcade racers with a focus on consistent car damage influenced by the likes of Destruction Derby. It had a cult following but the team proved to have potential. On November 1, 2013, they launched a Kickstarter for their next car game, simply titled Next Car Game. The campaign was not on track to meet its $350,000 USD goal and was cancelled.
But Next Car Game lived on. Bugbear released a technology sneak peek demo and decided to make a pre-order campaign on their own website. Then on January 15th 2014, Next Car Game was launched in Steam Early Access where it gets updated from time to time. Sometimes the updates came in fast and frequent. Sometimes the developers were eerily quiet. Mod support was available so the game, which has kept players to still be interested in the title.
Years have then passed, the game was eventually given a proper name, Wreckfest, and last year it was picked up by THQNordic for release in 2017. It was not ready in 2017.
But it is now. On June 14th 2018, Wreckfest will finally leave Steam Early Access. The press release mentioned that it was “only 1611 days” from Early Access to release.They certainly took their sweet time with this one.
Wreckfest is an arcade racer where metals bend, break and shatter. The banger scrapped cars you race in, either an American muscle, a sleek and slim Euro car or an import from Asia, will take damage with very visible effects. Go into the career mode and customise your cars to your taste (as well as reinforcing them for protection). Wreckfest also features online multiplayer, so you can ram and destroy other players online- no clean racing needed in this game.
Wreckfest will leave Early Access on June 14th and a console release for PS4 and Xbox One is set to be out on November 20th.