On October 6, Fuse Games’ STAR WARS: Galactic RacerTM transports you to the lawless Outer Rim where you must prove your worth—or face the consequences. Matt Webster, CEO of Fuse Games, parked his podracer at Intel Gaming Access to tell us about Fuse’s debut title, made in close collaboration with Lucasfilm Games.
From Chaos, Competition
“Our game is set in the New Republic era,” Matt explains. “The Empire’s grip has broken and, out of that chaos, an unsanctioned racing circuit called the Galactic League is born. You play as Shade, a pilot invited to help take down a corrupt champion. For STAR WARS fans it’s a new, authentic story. For racing fans, and particularly anyone who’s drifted away from the genre because it stopped feeling like it had stakes, this is built to bring that high-speed, high-intensity feeling back.”
Matt is a 30+ year veteran of the games industry, which might be why the idea of highly skilled individuals looking for a challenge appealed. “Galactic RacerTM was inspired by the pilots who came home from the Second World War,” Matt tells us. “That restless energy of people who’d found something they were brilliant at and weren’t ready to give up. We paired that with a classic sports-story structure: rivalries, comebacks, a villain you want to see humbled.”
It’s classic, but there’s always room to shake things up. “Where we differentiate is in how that story sits inside the gameplay,” Matt explains. “Open-world racing feels like the last genuine innovation in the racing genre, and we respect that, but a lot of what followed leaned into collection over consequence. We wanted the opposite: something easy to pick up but high intensity, where every choice genuinely matters. That’s why we built Galactic RacerTM around a runs-based structure, which is a first for the racing genre.”
These are the Vehicles You’re Looking For
“Podracing is back in a big way,” Matt affirms. “Podracers are playable from the start in Arcade mode and, for the first time ever, online against other players. The Campaign puts you through Shade’s story via our runs-based structure, where you’ll race, earn credits, choose parts, unlock abilities and racer styles, and race again with real consequences. Multiplayer brings all of that runs-based DNA online, with Quick Races for those who want to jump straight in, and Multiplayer Tour for up to 12 players.”
There’s at least one way to race that no one has seen before. “The skim speeder is an entirely new vehicle in the STAR WARS galaxy,” Matt reveals. “It’s one thing to create a racing version of a landspeeder, it’s another to invent a vehicle from scratch and have it feeling truly at home within the galaxy. We solved it by grounding it in something real first, competitive air racing, before pushing the design into the fantastical, and by working hand-in-hand with Lucasfilm Games from the first sketch.”
This wasn’t the only challenge, though. “It would have been easy to build a strong story and then bolt a rogue-lite structure on top,” Matt explains. “Instead, we developed both simultaneously, so the central story of Shade and the player’s own emergent story reinforce each other rather than compete for the player’s attention. We made sure the runs-based systems and the narrative campaign didn’t fight each other.”
Built for Speed
Another conflict the team worked to avoid was one between quality and performance. “PC matters enormously to us,” Matt affirms. “This is a game built for high-fidelity, high-intensity racing at speed, and PC is where players can push that furthest with the settings headroom to really show off what our races, vehicles, characters, and locations look like at their best. Our recommended target across formats is a cinematic, detailed experience at 4K60, and PC is the platform where the most dedicated racers will be able to go beyond that. We’ve built it to scale down sensibly, so it’s not a game that demands a top-end machine to be enjoyed.”
It does demand to be enjoyed, however, and Intel is pleased to be a part of that. “Intel made integrating XeSS really easy for us,” Matt says. “Their Unreal plugin worked straight out of the box. They also took builds of our game and gave us feedback and support to get the most out of the technology. We had a tight collaboration from the get-go. We were able to share builds of the game with their tech support guys and have them help us diagnose issues quickly. We were also able to take tweaks and fixes very quickly through their plugin release model so it was always a really fast feedback loop.”
Well, it would have to be; there are no slowcoaches among galactic racers. Take note gamers, and be on your marks for October 6.
Pre-purchase STAR WARS: Galactic RacerTM on Steam.