Last week we were treated to our first look at Clutch, an upcoming racing game from a new team of developers called Maverick Games, some of whom worked on Forza Horizon. Like Horizon, it’s based in a picturesque open-world map—in particular, the south of France, including Monaco—but after that, the similarities appear to die down, as we can observe from the first gameplay footage the studio shared today.
Now, this footage hasn’t been directly released by Maverick itself; the studio seemingly seeded it to content creators, who have then laid their own commentary over top of it. So, depending on whose video you watch, you might see some different clips. What’s immediately clear from everything out there, though, is that this game looks phenomenal, and the developers’ decision to base an open-world driving title in and around Monaco specifically is, frankly, genius.
As it so happens, I very recently visited Monaco. Not for the Formula 1 race, as much as I would’ve liked to, but weeks earlier for a friend’s wedding not far outside the principality. There’s a surrealness to being there for real than I’m sure any motorsport fan and/or racing game enjoyer could relate to, and it was obviously fascinating to walk the track’s perimeter.
What I think is especially cool about Clutch, however, is that you’re not just getting the circuit itself, which we’ve driven digitally ad-infinitum by now. You’re getting some of the surrounding roads, and you’re getting the freedom to turn off the path of the course itself through side streets and into regions that, formerly, have been blocked off.
That’s just a cool feeling. As a kid, I recall playing games like Ridge Racer and seeing walled-off roads and imagining where they might lead; now, Clutch will allow me to find out for myself. That’s something that’s only really possible with an environment that we all have some kind of history or familiarity with, and that’s why the choice of the French Riviera was such an astute one by Maverick.
The First CLUTCH Gameplay!!
Throughout the gameplay—which I’ve embedded YouTuber BlackPanthaa’s version of above—we see some quieter, slower moments, like driving a BMW 507 through the city while the protagonist chats with a passenger. Many of the streets seem narrower than those in Forza Horizon 6‘s Tokyo, and have some more traffic, too, which helps contribute a sense of scale and liveliness to the world.
The cars populating it are some pretty inspired picks—a 986 Porsche Boxster, original Renault Twingo, E39 BMW M5, etcetera. There’s street racing at night, historic circuit racing by day, and one particular stretch where our hero is tasked with stealing a car from a penthouse apartment (with actual on-foot gameplay) while also laying low from police. Spoiler alert: They succeed at the first goal but the second, not so much.
It’s hard to say at such an early stage, when Clutch is a year away from release, whether the game will genuinely make good on its promises. But as someone who has frankly had their fill of Forza Horizon’s rote, unflinching refusal to deviate from a money-printing formula, Maverick has earned my attention for zigging where many racing game devs tend to zag. Clutch has a rich narrative focus with characters that look incredible and have clearly been given the time and attention to deserve the spotlight in a scene. It has staggeringly beautiful car models that, frankly, look like they put Forza’s to shame, and we know they’ll be more customizable, too. And it’s got Monaco. That’s enough to make it worth keeping an eye on.
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