Supermono reveals freemium model for its gorgeously neon and ambitiously user-generated iOS racer Forever Drive
A supercharged Outrun in Tron
Shaping up to be one of the year's most anticipated (by me at least) iOS games, Supermono Studios has released more details about Forever Drive.
The conventional bit of the game is the Drive aspect, which is neatly encapsulated within the Drive mode.
This includes a bunch of pre-built tracks you can play your way through - dodging traffic and collecting bonuses as you attempt to get a high score before the time runs out.
As you race, you collect points which are converted into XP, which you use to unlock cars, paintwork, license plates and the like.
And there's moreNeat, but we've been doing that since Outrun, so while Forever Drive looks gorgeous - it's probably the first iOS game to use deferred rendering - that's not the main hook.
That's the Build mode.
In this, you get to use the in-built track editor to make your own tracks, populating them with scenery and buildings, then uploading to the cloud. Here - and this is the clever bit - tracks are combined to create an endless track for you and others to race on.
They'll look like this.
Pay to go faster
Also adding to the mix is Supermono's decision to take the game freemium.
This means you'll play for free, but when you start a race, you can spend a credit. At the end of each race, the conversion of your hard earned points to XP could influenced by a credits multipler. If, however, you didn't have any credits, you won't get the multipler, although you still get your base XP.
Credits may be provided in-game as bonus items, but the only consistent way to get them will be to buy them; basically, it will be a way of levelling up quicker, but one that also takes into account your skill as a player rather than just being a cash for a consumable such as Mojo, Warbucks or Smurfberries etc.
As for release schedule, Supermono says the game will be initially launched in Ireland, and perhaps Canada, to test the cloud-based system works, before hopefully launching worldwide in October. It will be a universal app for iPhone and iPad.
You'll get an idea how Forever Drive looks and plays in the following video.
