Hot Wheels Unleashed is shaping up to be a Hot Wheels game like none before it. It is more than just a racing game, but a love letter to the Hot Wheels franchise as a whole, capturing just what it was like to play with the toys. Previous Hot Wheels games have provided traditional arcade racing experiences, featuring some of the franchise's iconic vehicles, but few have successfully captured the spirit and creativity of the toys themselves.
At the beginning of 2021, Hot Wheels Unleashed was announced, and it immediately looked like something special. Developed by Milestone, known most recently for its work on the MotoGP and Ride series, Hot Wheels Unleashed is designed to be a fun, arcade racing title. Gameplay doubles down aesthetically and mechanically on what it means to be a part of the Hot Wheels brand. Game Rant spoke with Milestone's Federico Cardini, Lead Game Designer on Hot Wheels Unleashed, about how the game's art direction, Track Builder, and car selection capture the Hot Wheels experience.
Hot Wheels Unleashed's Toy Aesthetic
For gamers who have played Hot Wheels games in the past, Hot Wheels Unleashed may be a stark contrast to what has come before. From the first Hot Wheels Unleashed gameplay trailer, the game hasn't looked like a standard racing title. The cars don't look like real cars — they look like the toys one can buy from the store. Players aren't racing through icy glaciers, sandswept ruins or some other fantastical environment — they are racing through someone's garage, or through a skatepark.
For the team at Milestone, these design elements are at the root of Hot Wheels Unleashed's development. When asked about the toyness of Hot Wheels Unleashed, Cardini said, "Since the beginning, during our initial brainstorming, the goal was clear: we wanted to make a Hot Wheels game with real Hot Wheels die-cast cars, not something using real cars with Hot Wheels stickers on them." This distinction indicated by Cardini can be seen by simply looking at previous Hot Wheels titles; while those games' cars are taken from the Hot Wheels collection, generally speaking, they are meant to look realistic, as if someone inside is actually driving them.
A precise example would be Forza Horizon 3's Hot Wheels DLC, which added Hot Wheels vehicles and track pieces to the game's overworld. The gorgeous game features impressive looking cars set against a luscious and relatively lifelike Australian environment. As such, the added Hot Wheels cars retain their signature designs, but were aesthetically changed to look natural against the game's overall realistic art design. Unleashed's die-cast cars would look out of place in a game like Forza Horizon 3, but they look right at home in Unleashed.
Track Building in Hot Wheels Unleashed
This philosophy emphasizing Hot Wheels' toyness does not solely pertain to the cars, but to Unleashed's other features as well, like the Track Builder. Players can create their own custom tracks by stretching, bending, curving and ultimately connecting dozens of those iconic orange pieces with Unleashed's robust Track Builder. Furthermore, players are able to make tracks in any of Unleashed's environments like the Skyscraper and Garage environments. Cardini spoke about the importance of Unleashed's Track Builder:
"The track builder came very early in the development process. Actually, it was one of the first parts of the game to be created. And this is because, in our minds, you can’t do a Hot Wheels game without a track builder; building a track is a fundamental part of the experience when playing with Hot Wheels."
As Cardini indicates, it was essential to have the Track Builder, espeically if the game was committing to the toy-aesthetic in its other areas.
Every level that ships with Hot Wheels Unleashed was designed using the Track Builder, a strong indication of the tool's power. Designing a tool that is both powerful enough for a game designer, but intuitive enough for the player, was no easy feat for Milestone. Explaining the process, Cardini elaborates, "The development of the track builder took around two years and we created it with both our team of developers as well as Hot Wheels Unleashed’s players in mind." Coincidentally, the mode is reminiscent of Forza Horizon 4's Stunt Track Builder, though Unleashed's mode is much more expansive.
Hot Wheels Unleashed's Car Selection
As with most racing titles, one of the most important aspects is the vehicle selection. On one hand, there are cases like in Gran Turismo 5's selection of over 1,000 cars, an unparalleled collection resulting in minute differences between each vehicle. On the other hand are games like Dirt 5, which launched with only 63 cars that are spread across 13 different classes. Hot Wheels Unleashed fits into this latter category, offering a solid assortment of iconic vehicles, each with their own specifications, making no one car the same.
Hot Wheels Unleashed boasts over 60 cars to choose from at launch, with many more on the way through post-release content. Milestone handpicked every vehicle based on which ones the Hot Wheels community appreciated most. Despite the magnitude of how many Hot Wheels have been produced over the years, it actually wasn't that hard to choose which cars made it into the game, according to Cardini. "This part of the game was a pretty easy task, I have to admit, since many people in the team have been a part of the Hot Wheels community since they were kids," they explained.
From a design standpoint, no two cars look the same, and it is immediately clear that these are toy cars, not actual ones. For example, there is the "Veloci Racer," a car shaped like a velociraptor, the "Buns of Steel," a truck with a cheeseburger on the back, and even the Batmobile, which is just one of the game's many crossover vehicles.
At the same time, not all the cars are that over-the-top, with vehicles from real manufacturers like the Ford Mustang GT or the Audi R8 Spyder, but even these look like replica toys of famous vehicles, and not the actual cars themselves. Hot Wheels Unleashed is a game about racing with toy cars and not toys as cars, and that is something to be excited about.
Hot Wheels Unleashed launches September 30 on for PC, PS4, PS5, Switch, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.