Trailmakers is inspired by Rare's Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts
And it's coming out later this year.
We're about to see a game inspired by Rare's Banjo-Kazooie. Later this year we'll see a game inspired by Rare's Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts.
Nuts & Bolts is an action adventure game released on Xbox 360 back in November 2008. The hook is vehicle construction. You can design your own vehicle, from cars to bikes, boats to aeroplanes.
"But whereas a traditional platform game could survive a sequence of poor levels, or even succeed in spite of a majority with a world as lovely as this, with characters so delightful and secrets so pleasing to uncover, Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts is not a platform game," wrote ex-Eurogamer editor Tom Bramwell in Eurogamer's Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts review.
"The game it has become instead demands thoughtful, exciting challenges that inspire the player to pitch in and help get the most out of each level, but it fails to provide them, and even though it's worth persevering with for the occasional hurdles race, egg-and-spoon and a game-world in aptly Rare form, ultimately it's a brilliant shell with a mostly hollow centre."
Fast forward to 2017, and it looks like we'll soon get a game inspired by Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts.
We've actually covered Trailmakers before, back in 2016 when it was called Pioneers. It's from a new studio called Flashbulb Games, which rose from the ashes of Microsoft's closure of Press Play, the developer of Max: The Curse of Brotherhood and Kalimba.
Trailmakers is an open-world vehicle-building expedition game. You collect parts and blocks, use them to build cars, boats, planes and rockets, and pilot the vehicles to overcome environmental hazards. The developers call it a "dusty off-road adventure". The video, below, gives you a good sense of what it's about.
Trailmakers recently passed Steam Greenlight and entered the closed alpha phase. Flashbulb Games said it'll come out on Steam as an Early Access title late 2017. One to watch.