UK-based Maverick Games has revealed its debut project, Clutch, which it describes as a “cinematic open-world action-driving game.” Clutch’s story will combine both professional circuit racing with “action-packed underground race-and-chase sandbox gameplay where speed and style meet high-stakes pursuits and risky escapes.”

Led by former Forza Horizon 5 creative director Mike Brown, Clutch will launch in Spring 2027 on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC.

Clutch’s story campaign will focus on a pair of sibling driving prodigies navigating their way through both a prestigious and historic racing tournament known as the R1K (described as a proving ground for the world’s top drivers for the past 100 years) and an underground car community dubbed Midnight Collective. However, when Clutch’s hero character finds himself in hot water and in need of a fixer, “the underbelly of the R1K is smashed wide open.”

A first look at the story, actors, and the world of Clutch will be revealed at the Summer Game Fest Showcase on Friday, June 5.

The announcement describes that Clutch will see players competing across a living PvPvE action-driving world, and it’s noted Clutch’s “open-world sandbox unleashes blockbuster action and unscripted chaos in every high-speed getaway.” At one point, a car is depicted firing a grappling gadget at a pole and swinging around it at speed.

In the first look at Clutch, Brown discussed that the project is benefiting from the longest development of any game he’s worked on. Running on a custom version of Unreal Engine 5, Clutch will not only boast cars where “every exterior curve, every fleck of paint, [and] every interior stitch” is recreated perfectly, but cars that actually come with signs of wear, and signs that the cars have actually been driven.

Clutch will also arrive with a deep level of vehicle customisation options, both interior and exterior. The initial showcase unveils a wide range of options, from steering wheels to exhaust tips, and seats to neons. However, not only does it appear we can expect a large range of custom parts and options, but there will also be human details available to help the cars feel even more real. The examples shown are things like coffee cups and drinks in the cupholders, receipts on the dashboard, or hoodies strewn over the passenger seat.

“I’ll talk through what we were going with there,” Brown tells IGN. “I’m not going to ding any other games in particular, because this actually applies to quite a few games, but I guess traditionally the presentation has a bit museum-like. Where the car, no matter its age, will be presented in a way that is completely pristine. Which then creates a problem that it’s so perfect that it doesn’t alway sit in the scene in a way that makes sense. Like, you’d be driving it around a place that looks like a real city or real countryside, with this museum-quality 60-year-old car driving around.

“It always pops out of the scene in a way that doesn’t feel real. You could never actually see that car, on a road, looking like that; it would never exist that way. The way it’d actually exist would be there’d be dust, there’d be little bits of build-up, there’d be carbon around the exhaust. There’d be little bits of wear here and there. If you looked inside it there’d be wear on the steering wheel where someone’s driven this and gripped it, and the leather would be sagging on the seats. Maybe there’d be sun damage on the leather if it’s a soft top. Once you start to layer in all those bits of detail, a thing just looks that much more real and loved.”

Brown founded Maverick in December 2022, a little over a year after Forza Horizon 5 was released.

“I had been on Forza for a very long time and had achieved, I think, quite a lot with that franchise and really had an appetite to go and do something new; to try and push and do something new in the genre,” he says.

“The problem with a franchise that is as successful and, frankly, excellent as Forza is it’s very difficult to go and try and push that thing into a whole new direction because the business would like it to stay in the direction it’s going, because it’s good for business. I felt like there was an opportunity to do something different and do something a bit fresher in the genre.”

As a result, Brown departed Playground and set up Maverick Games, where he was joined by a number of other Forza Horizon veterans, including producer Tom Butcher, technical director Matt Craven, technical art director Gareth Harwood, audio director Fraser Stachan, and art director Ben Penrose. It was revealed in January 2023 that the team was working on a “premium open-world game for consoles and PC.” Brown explains the team has since grown to about 140 people, but they currently remain independent.

“We are technically an indie dev so we will be entering ourselves for all the indie game awards,” he jokes.

“We are about two miles away from the Playground Games office, so still very close contact with all those guys and still have a lot of friends over there – we see each other every day. And then we didn’t do what a lot of studios do where they kinda go into stealth mode for a few years; we tried to – as much as you can do as a burgeoning, embryonic studio – be quite loud. We’ve always been quite open about what we’ve been up to.

“There’s only so much you can say, because you talk about what you’re doing in terms of development, but you can’t talk about the specifics of the game, because you’ll expose yourself a little too early, but from the start we were trying to just do things a little differently in the way that put out ourselves as a studio and as a company, but also the way that we operate internally, and try and just really encourage it to be a very open and creative and innovative space. And I think that’s gonna show in the software; I think once you see what we’ve got I think that’ll back up the theory there.”

Clutch is looking to make a big splash within the racing genre.

“Just to give a sense of the ambition of where we’re going with this – I’m obviously very well-invested in car culture and automotive entertainment, and really aware that historically there’s always been these huge tentpole franchises that have propped up and pushed car culture forward,” says Brown. “There was that spell where Need for Speed – from Need for Speed Underground, Underground 2, and Most Wanted – was the number one best-selling game in the world, like, three years running. There was that period where Top Gear was the most-watched TV show and, in film, even though it’s not the biggest film franchise in the world, the Fast & Furious series is one of them. It’s made more money than Harry Potter; it’s made more money than Batman. And that is the level of ambition for Clutch, to set the tone for car culture across the next decade, and be that tentpole IP that drives culture forward.”

Luke is a Senior Editor on the IGN reviews team. You can track him down on Bluesky @mrlukereilly to ask him things about stuff.