I went to see this game on Steam’s newest release tab, but the surprise (besides a nice affirmation that it sits at Very Positive reviews at this time) was realizing that it didn’t come from Electronic Arts or Ubisoft.
The article is technically pretty old now, but adds more details that have been made a lot more relevant on the game’s release.
Secret Mode was started by Sumo Digital. Then they were set free when Tenent bought sumo. Now some investors have given them lots of money.
Interesting to see. As much as I love Star Wars I’d like a new Burnout Successor built with its own amazing Engine. Not unreal …
Custom engine is probably not feasible with a small team. Idk how many people they have but you need several developers working on just the engine if that’s what you’re gonna do over using an off the shelf engine like unreal or unity.
Source: indie game dev on the side
And the engine work is a lot of extra development time added on, because it can’t be done concurrently with much of the later game design work.