Game Spark Reports Hands-On With CLUTCH From Former Forza Horizon 5 Director
The play report shows Maverick Games building its own open-world racer around a split between official circuits and a night street gang, which is the structure the studio's Forza Horizon veterans are asking players to judge on its own terms.
Reporting from 1 source: Game Spark.
At gamescom 2026 in Cologne, held from August 26 to August 30, Game Spark played CLUTCH, a racing game in development at Maverick Games. The studio is led by Mike Brown, who was creative director on Forza Horizon 5. The demo opens with a cutscene that hands control to the player across a police chase, a lavender field run, and a circuit race.
The demo build moves between two faces of the same map. One is the professional circuit, the other an underground street racing group called the Midnight Collective that appears at night. The setting is an open world modeled on the French Riviera, with an area built as an expansion of Monaco that mixes underground tunnels and elevated roads. An opening cutscene runs from nighttime streets to a Jeep crossing a lavender field to a circuit race, and control passes to the player inside each sequence.
Synthesized by Yomimono from the 1 cited source below, including Japanese-language reporting where cited, then editorially reviewed before publishing.