Original Fire Games on CIRCUIT SUPERSTARS
We spoke to the Indie dev behind the upcoming CIRCUIT SUPERSTARS about the team, their vision for the game and more.CIRCUIT SUPERSTARS isn’t your typical racing game.
That should be clear to anyone who’s seen the E3 trailer, which highlights the charming presentation and a unique approach to top down racing:
If it feels like a passion project, that’s because, according to Original Fire Games - the Indie developer behind the game - it is.
To find out more, we spoke to Caro Mastretta, Director and Producer at Original Fire Games, to find out all about the game, and the people making it.
So Caro - what is CIRCUIT SUPERSTARS?
CIRCUIT SUPERSTARS is a top-down, physics-driven racing game, that is made by a six-person team - Original Fire Games.
Players compete in a wide variety of car classes that cover the world of motorsport through the eras.
The game aims to capture the most exciting elements of racing - things like race and pit strategy, overtaking, or shaving time of laps - and put them towards an accessible format that both enthusiasts and novice players can enjoy
How did Original Fire Games get started?
Actually, CIRCUIT SUPERSTARS - or Apex Racing League as it was originally named - preceded Original Fire Games. My brother Alberto started working on prototypes of the game when he lived in Vancouver back in 2014.
The company itself officially formed in 2018, when negotiations with Square Enix Collective were underway.
How has the team changed over the course of development?
Honestly, it feels like we’re at the beginning of something great.
A year ago, Original Fire Games didn't exist - we just had a great game we knew we wanted to build. Today, we have a six-person team working on the game, with four developers in our Vancouver studio and two developers in Mexico.
The team is super-talented and enthusiastic, but more importantly, we're working together because we’ve loved working together in the past.
It’s an exciting time - everyone’s passionate about the game we're creating, and we're all excited to be building the studio.
What was the inspiration behind CIRCUIT SUPERSTARS?
We grew up close to both motorsport and games, so it felt natural to try and blend both of those two into a game. Our inspiration can’t really be rooted back to a single thing - it’s a collection of experiences.
We love the history of motorsport and we love the history of racing games. So making a game that has cars from all eras and uses the top-down view like the first racing games did, feels like we’re paying homage to the history of both of those elements!
Why should people be excited about playing CIRCUIT SUPERSTARS?
We’re approaching the racing genre in a way that hasn’t been done before.
We set out to create driving dynamics that are simple to learn yet rewarding, which in turn allows players to focus on the truly fascinating aspects of the sport: mastering new tracks, fighting wheel-to-wheel for position, managing tyre wear and coming up with clever pit-stop strategies in order to fight for the win.
It’s also a game that lends itself really well to streaming. We believe that streamers and observers of CIRCUIT SUPERSTARS will have an entirely different type of fun.
How did your collaboration with Square Enix Collective come about?
We were introduced to the team by a friend from another publishing studio. We sent a playable demo to the guys at Square Enix, and everything developed from there.
What has been the biggest challenge for development?
Honestly, getting to a point at which we were able to build a team around the project. That’s not easy!
We've always had a clear vision of what we want the game to be but building the right team and finding the resources to actually have that team working full time on the game… that was a huge challenge.
We have no doubt that there will be even larger challenges ahead, but at least we have the right team to tackle them.
What part of the game are you most proud of?
Hmm… Making this game has been an enormous challenge, so probably the aspect we are most proud of is the growth we've needed to go through to get to this point - both as game developers and human beings.
CIRCUIT SUPERSTARS will release in 2020 for Xbox One, PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch and PC.
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