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Ex-Burnout, Fable, Eight Days devs announce iOS action racing game

Smash Cops "boasts some of the highest production values seen to date on touch devices".

Ex-Burnout, Fable and Eight Days developers have joined forces to create an iOS action racing game they believe will revolutionise third-person games on touch devices.

Smash Cops, from new London-based developer Hutch, launches in mid-January 2012 on the App Store.

Smash Cops' "push controls" let you use a single finger to control and steer your car. Hutch reckons this control scheme "will set a new standard for all third-person games on touch devices".

You play the cops in wild car chases, smashing felons off the road in an American city. The game includes 20 missions and five vehicles. Its debut trailer is below.

Hutch was founded in June 2011 by five former PlayStation developers who have worked on big console franchises including Fable, Burnout, EyeToy, Battalion Wars, This is Football, the cancelled PlayStation 3 exclusive Eight Days and The Getaway.

"The studio believes that Smash Cops is destined to massively progress the touch gaming experience, and not just for racing games," Hutch said. "Smash Cops boasts some of the highest production values seen to date on touch devices."

Art director Will Whitaker, who worked at Sony Computer Entertainment Europe as art director for over five years, said: "I'm delighted by what we have achieved with Smash Cops: our first launch to market as indie developers.

"We identified early on that a lot of touch games use traditional console interfaces on a touch screen resulting in a poor user experience, this became an opportunity and an obsession for the team to improve upon, I hope our progress will delight gamers and influence other third-person touch games in the future."

Technical director Sean Turner, who was a lead programmer at SCEE and Burnout and Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit developer Criterion, added: "Passion, personal commitment, a world of low cost, and accessible development tools allowed us to take a risk with Smash Cops.

"We hope it will show that touch devices can have rich console experiences designed for gaming on the go. Our long term goal is to further develop our IP and work with other publishers and developers in the future on creating cool experiences."