Italian studio 3DClouds is well versed in making racing games – it’s put out everything from the futuristic Xenon Racer to Paw Patrol Grand Prix – and its devs say their latest self-funded project is all of that experience culminating in something they’ve been keen to deliver for years.
Formula Legends is the simcadey racer the studio’s just announced – it’s not the first royalty-free take on F1 to hit the market, but looks like it could be the most interesting. I recently had the chance to see the game in action and chat to a few of its devs, and the picture they painted certainly has potential, even if it comes with all of usual questions in terms of finding an audience that could make a true hit that you find with lots of indie races, especially ones that try to blend sim and arcade.
It’s a question of having a concrete identity vs trying to maximise appeal, and one that a lot of developers have wrestled with. When I raised that with the devs – executive producer Roberta Migliori, producer Francesco Mantovani, and lead designer Matteo Breda – they seemed confident they’ve come to a good answer.
“To be honest, at the beginning of the project, we wanted to do something more arcade-ish,” Mantovani told me, “at a certain point we started to think about ‘hey, what if we don’t introduce this kind of feature, and so we slightly changed the scope of the game…to try and have a different experience.”
“We will be accessible to everyone, so a young fan of the [F1] can play,” he continues, “But also have some more in-depth things that can really be appreciated by a huge [petrolhead].” Enter the version of Formula Legends that exists now – a game that sees you pilot small kart-style off-brand F1 cars around off-brand recreations of classic F1 tracks.
There is plenty of potential for chaotic racing – at one point a couple of the still work-in-progress AI drivers decided to fling themselves into a wall at Formula Legends’ version of Spa, narrowly avoiding Breda’s car as he whizzed by. However, it’s tempered with sim-style mechanics like tyre wear, full damage, and track limit warnings. Plus, there are other strategic elements like fuel consumption and changing weather that you can play with if you want an extra challenge.
The cars you’ll be racing range from classic 70s-style F1 cars all the way up to the modern day, all rendered with small, kart-style bodies that should suit overtaking a lot better than the behemoths Lando Norris and co are piloting in the real world. Naturally, this game lacking an official F1 licence, all of the teams, liveries, and driver names are knock-offs like McLauden, Ferenzo, and Luis Hammerton (you get no points for guessing any of those). 3DClouds, however, does get points in my book for giving its not-quite-Lando-Norris the moniker “Chuck Morris” and its almost-Charles-Leclerc “Charlie Lacreme”.
Executive producer Migliori cites not being bound by the rules that an official tie-in would have to play by as a boon for the team, especially since it’s allowed them to focus in on what the devs class as the aspect that’ll aim to set Formula Legends apart from the pack – this being its focus on F1 history. To that end, the 16 unique vehicle models you’ll hop into throughout the game’s main story mode will see you race through different eras of F1, from 60/70s single seaters that’re barely more than an engine and fuel tank in an aluminium shell to versions of today’s uber-complex machines.
Each car of the same era boasts exactly the same stats, with the different AI drivers’ unique strengths, weaknesses, and perks providing the boost in certain stats that’ll differentiate between them. That sounds pretty good for parity, but we’ll have to see how it does in terms of accuracy and trying to win with a backmarker team actually being an extra challenge.
Despite the car stats being level across any given era, Mantovani is confident you should feel a substantial difference when hopping between cars of different eras, demanding you to come up with different setups if you’re going for the more sim-style experience. “For example, late seventies vehicles will have harder steering than a modern vehicle, a longer braking time, a lower top speed”, he explained.
“We also tried to give as much fealty as possible to the evolution of the cars through some specific rules that change through the years, like the possibility to change the tyre compound or refueling [being permitted].” Those pit stops will see you have to execute a quick-time event by the way, so have your best button pressing fingers ready when you dive for the box.
Rather than railroading you into starting from the furthest point back in time and racing your way up to the present day, Breda revealed that you’ll have the freedom to start the game’s era championship-based story mode in any era. Which one you choose will also govern which versions of the game’s 14 tracks, which of course are inspired by the likes of Spa and Monaco. There look to be slightly different iterations of each track connected to certain eras, with them “evolving through the years” via changes to stuff like the trackside furniture.
I only saw a few races across three different tracks during the hands-off preview, so didn’t get a chance to really see this aspect in action, but it’s certainly something I’ll be interested to check out for myself.
Overall, Formula Legends looks pretty promising, though whether it really takes off will likely be defined by how much the racing audience agrees and meshes with 3DClouds’ answer to the sim vs arcade conundrum. There are certainly some interesting elements, even if I’m sceptical as to whether the focus on F1 history is enough of a unique selling point to really help a game stand out from the crowd in the way that the most successful indie racers with arcadey elements – the likes of Funselektor’s Art of Rally, which is cited as a influence here – have managed to.
It’ll be a very tough race to win, so here’s hoping all those lessons the studio’s learned culminate in a racer that can maximise its podium potential.
Formula Legends is set to launch on PC, Nintendo Switch, Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One, PS4, and PS5 in late 2025. You can wishlist it on PC via Steam or the Epic Store from today.
