"We wanted to push the genre forward!" Star Wars: Galactic Racer bosses talk crashes, consequences and more — Gaming

Star Wars: Galactic Racer is the debut game from Fuse Games, a new developer based in Guildford, founded by CEO Matt Webster (the former general manager of Criterion Games).

I caught up with Matt, as well as Craig Derrick, executive producer at Lucasfilm Games, during a preview event to discuss what it takes to make the next Star Wars racing game.

We have already written a few previews of the game, which releases 6 October this year, which you can check out below:

With so much experience in game development from both previous positions at Criterion Games and EA, Matt is a veteran in the industry. Despite this, it’s still surprising a new developer could tackle something as big as Star Wars IP.

"We are no strangers to working with Lucasfilm Games," Matt begins. "This game came about with us taking that shared love of Star Wars and a shared love of racing, and coming up with an idea of, ‘Hey, it’s about time someone made another Star Wars racing game.’"

From the very beginning, this joint collaboration between Fuse Games and Lucasfilm was crucial in the game’s development, as Craig outlines: "They clearly came in with […] a willingness to collaborate with us on all things from the story to the richness of the worlds."

"It was a privilege to work with them to develop it into the game it’s become now."

Despite all the help from Lucasfilm Games, Matt still recognises the weight of the IP throughout development: "It’s an extraordinary privilege. We’re very thankful to our friends at Lucasfilm Games, but it’s a collaboration."

Unlike other Star Wars racing games, Galactic Racer is not just pod-racing. The game features a variety of different vehicles such as speeder bikes, land speeders and skim speeders. However, Matt recognises the importance of pod-racing to the franchise.

"We knew that we couldn’t make a Star Wars racing game without featuring pod-racing," Matt explains. "As you experienced in the prologue […] we wanted to broaden the sport of racing beyond pod-racers, bringing in the land speeders, speeder bikes and the brand-new skim speeder."

"That in itself allowed a whole new avenue of creativity of how to bring Star Wars racing into a new realm of racing games. We wanted to push the genre forward."

View oEmbed on the source website

"Pod-racing is so familiar, you know, that's the upper echelon," Craig adds. "That's almost the pinnacle of racing that you've seen in Star Wars, and so the challenge was to make each of those other vehicles feel just as powerful, just as fast, and just as dynamic as a pod-racer, and yet craft their own identity."

One of the game’s main strengths is not just variety, but the movement of the different vehicles that feel fluid and almost effortless to handle. On researching and developing this movement, Lucasfilm Games and Fuse Games went to the original source material.

"You look at the films for inspiration. You look at how to represent the speed and velocity of racing. You look at how crashes are represented in the film," Craig highlights. "We did so much research and work with Fuse to get that feeling right."

"The other half of that experience is audio. What you’re hearing as much as you’re seeing I think brings the feel of authenticity to this world."

For Matt, game feel is incredibly important during development: "We put an enormous amount of care and attention into game feel."

"With games being an interactive medium, the quality of the interactions are incredibly important. As Craig rightly says, the audio in this game is really sensational."

View Green Video on the source website

The choice of story, character and where the game fits into the overall Star Wars timeline is also crucial. In Galactic Racer, you play as the lone racer, Shade, who is fighting for both revenge and glory against Kestar Bool, the current champion of the Galactic League and the man behind a corporation ruling Shade’s planet.

"It’s a huge galaxy far, far away, and yet we decided to make a story very local that fits neatly into this era because it gives us the most richness of characters and worlds to explore," Craig outlines.

But beyond creating a rich world that pushes the boundaries of Star Wars racing, something that the team at Fuse Games wanted to implement was consequences if the player fails to complete the requirements of the race.

"One of the things that we really wanted to do with this game was push the genre forward, and that was in consequence," Matt explains.

"In the eliminator, if you don’t make it in the top three, the consequence is that you’re out. It’s over. You’re back to the start of the act. Bringing that consequence back into racing was really exciting."

If you want to take on the challenge and try it out for yourself, Star Wars: Galactic Racer is coming to PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S and PC on 6 October 2026.

Check out more of our Gaming coverage or visit our TV Guide and Streaming Guide to find out what's on. For more TV recommendations and reviews, listen to The Radio Times Podcast.