The former Burnout developers behind Star Wars: Galactic Racer reckon it’s important to challenge players, because they’re going to tune out otherwise.
Star Wars: Galactic Racer is a tough game. Intentionally so, with Fuse Games CEO Matt Webster saying “we are asking way more out of players” this time around compared to the Burnout games that a majority of the team used to develop, because “modern gamers can manage a greater amount of cognitive load.”
Not only is the racing extremely fast, but you have a slate of aggressive racers trying to ram you off the track, and the slightest hesitation on a turn can cause you to launch into a corner and explode. And given that you only have a finite amount of crashes before you’re forced to forfeit, it’s likely that some may take a significant amount of time before they even reach act 2.
Speaking to GamesRadar+, Webster explains plainly: “Games should challenge players.” With the Burnout series, he says, “we used to throw rewards at you – dopamine hits of reward, reward, car, car, car! Eventually, if that’s just one note, then you start to tune it out.”
He adds, “But this game should challenge you. We wanted to front that up so you feel like, ‘a hard fought fifth place – yeah I’ll take it.'”
Webster describes a need for what he calls “light and shade,” calling the segments where you play as Shade when you reach a new planet an “important aspect.” He says: “You’ve got the light and shade between the super high intensity racing and the lower intensity immersion in Star Wars.”