With its upcoming narrative racing game Heading Out, developer Serious Sim seems to be putting its own fresh spin on the vehicular genre. When one usually thinks of racing titles, iconic franchises such as Need for Speed instantly come to mind, but there’s not much else to do other than drive the car around and win races in those games.
Fortunately, developers like Serious Sim and Ironwood, the latter being the development team behind Pacific Drive, a survival title released last month, are making sure that they try something new with the genre and possibly end up creating sub-branches of it to keep them interesting in today’s landscape.
Games like Heading Out Show That the Racing Genre Can Be So Much More
We recently had the pleasure of having an in-depth conversation with Szymon Adamus, who is the Business Development Manager at Serious Sim Games, during which comparing Heading Out with Pacific Drive felt like a natural and important discussion topic. Developers who create games based on vehicles usually just focus on the racing and driving aspects, giving those titles very little room to grow into something more.
Which is why it is always an intriguing prospect when a studio gets out of its comfort zone and adds fresh elements to its game, like a unique monochromatic art style, cinematic inspirations, Roguelike mechanics, and actual quests for players to take on.
Unfortunately, games like Heading Out do not really come out that often, and upon asking Szymon Adamus his thoughts about this unsaturated (for now) market and how gamers are probably looking forward to another title similar to Pacific Drive, he responded by calling the lack of titles like these “quite surprising.” According to the Business Development Manager, racing “games like Burnout and Need for Speed are” amazing, but “it is fascinating that this genre hasn’t been pursued more.”
Serious Sim Games and Ironwood Studios May Have Created an Interesting Sub-Genre
“Who knows, maybe between Heading Out and Pacific Drive, we have birthed a fresh, new sub-genre,” said Szymon Adamus, as he talked more about how the upcoming Serious Sim Games title relates to the one from Ironwood Studios.
The games share a sense of unified concept, and according to Adamus, “the thing that connects” the two titles “more than anything is the fact that you are on the road getting familiar with your car through adventure.”
What sets the upcoming game apart from its survival counterpart is that it will be more “character-driven in terms of its story,” and the Business Development Manager admits that seeing the positive reception to Pacific Drive definitely got his team’s hopes up.
Would you like more developers to embrace similar driving sub-genres? Are you looking forward to playing HO? Let us know in the comments!
