Maverick Games, which was founded in 2022, has unveiled its debut game ahead of a full look at this week’s Summer Game Fest. Clutch is a very promising open-world racing game scheduled for a 2027 release, which Maverick describes as a “cinematic open-world action-driving game.”

First, why should you care? Well, Maverick is made up of former Forza Horizon developers, including Creative Director Mike Brown, COO Harinder Sangha, producer Tom Butcher, technical director Matt Craven, technical art director Gareth Harwood, audio director Fraser Stachan, and art director Ben Penrose. That’s a strong lineup of talent.

According to IGN, during an early glimpse at the game, Brown said “The problem with a franchise that is as successful and, frankly, excellent as Forza is it’s very difficult to go and try and push that thing into a whole new direction because the business would like it to stay in the direction it’s going, because it’s good for business. I felt like there was an opportunity to do something different and do something a bit fresher in the genre.”

Clutch is being pushed as quite heavily story focused, featuring two siblings, both racing prodigys who are competing in the R1K, which in the in-game world is considered the number one proving ground for racers. While it’s all sanctioned, at night illegal street racing takes place as well. The story is being written by Jamie Brittain, co-creator of the British TV series Skins, so they really are trying to give the game a strong narrative, something Forza Horizon 6 was missing.

Car customisation is another big push, including the ability to add undercar lighting for some proper Need for Speed vibes. There’s also plenty of bodywork choices apparently, swappable seats and steering wheels and even the ability to choose the drink in your cupholder.

Another focus is on cars taking damage, both big and small.

According to Brown, cars in a lot of other racing games present the cars as too pristine, too clean, too “museum-like”.

“It always pops out of the scene in a way that doesn’t feel real. You could never actually see that car, on a road, looking like that; it would never exist that way. The way it’d actually exist would be there’d be dust, there’d be little bits of build-up, there’d be carbon around the exhaust. There’d be little bits of wear here and there,” said Brown in the presentation. “If you looked inside it there’d be wear on the steering wheel where someone’s driven this and gripped it, and the leather would be sagging on the seats. Maybe there’d be sun damage on the leather if it’s a soft top. Once you start to layer in all those bits of detail, a thing just looks that much more real and loved.”

It looks like Maverick wants to make their cars more well-loved and believable. Of course, there’s still going to be limitations, and Brown doesn’t appear to have addressed that yet. The reason games like Forza Horizon 6 don’t let you completely wreck cars is usually become of the licensing deals: the real-world manafacturers don’t want their cars shown that way.

Maverick Games did sign a deal with Amazon to act as publisher, but Amazon pulled out of that deal last year when they closed their entire gaming division, so now Maverick is acting as an independent developer.

Clutch will be shown off this week, so keep an eye out. It sounds promising.