Maverick Games, a UK studio founded by Mike Brown after his long run as creative director on Forza Horizon 5, has unveiled Clutch, its debut title. The game lands Spring 2027 on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC, positioning itself as a hybrid between prestige circuit racing and underground street culture.
Clutch fuses what Brown calls a "cinematic open-world action-driving game" with dual gameplay threads. Players will navigate both the R1K, a prestigious 100-year-old racing tournament that functions as a proving ground for elite drivers, and the Midnight Collective, an underground car community operating in the shadows. The story centers on sibling driving prodigies whose lives collide when one character's troubles expose the corrupt underbelly of the racing establishment.
The game runs on a custom version of Unreal Engine 5 and uses a living PvPvE sandbox that generates what the studio describes as "unscripted chaos" during high-speed pursuits and escapes. A showcase clip shows a car firing a grappling gadget at a pole and swinging around it in full motion, hinting at action mechanics beyond traditional racing.
Brown emphasized that Clutch has benefited from the longest development cycle of any project he has overseen. That extended timeline shows in the granular attention paid to vehicle authenticity. Cars feature individually modeled exterior curves, paint flecks, and interior stitching. Critically, they also display wear: dust, carbon buildup around exhausts, creased steering wheels, and sagging leather on seats that show a car has actually been lived in and driven hard.
"The problem with presenting a museum-quality 60-year-old car on a real city street is it pops out of the scene," Brown explained. "It doesn't feel real because you'd never actually see that car looking that way in the world. Once you layer in dust, wear patterns, sun damage, and human details like coffee cups or hoodies on the passenger seat, the car becomes believable."
Customization runs deep across both exterior and interior. Steering wheels, exhaust tips, seats, neons, and human details like dashboards drinks and receipts all feed into personalization. The goal is making each vehicle feel owned rather than showroom fresh.
Brown founded Maverick in December 2022, roughly a year after Forza Horizon 5 launched. He left Playground Games because the franchise's success made pushing the genre in new directions nearly impossible within that structure. "The business would like it to stay in the direction it's going because it's good for business," he said. "I felt like there was an opportunity to do something different and fresher in the genre."
He took key Forza Horizon veterans with him: producer Tom Butcher, technical director Matt Craven, technical art director Gareth Harwood, audio director Fraser Stachan, and art director Ben Penrose. The studio has grown to roughly 140 people and remains independent, operating just two miles from Playground Games' offices in what appears to be an amicable split.
Brown's ambitions for Clutch reach beyond gaming. He cited the cultural dominance of Need for Speed Underground and Most Wanted as the best-selling games for three consecutive years, Top Gear's reign as peak car television, and Fast and Furious as a franchise that has outearned Harry Potter and Batman. "That is the level of ambition for Clutch," Brown said, "to set the tone for car culture across the next decade and be that tentpole IP that drives culture forward."
A full story reveal featuring actors and the game world debuts at Summer Game Fest Showcase on June 5.
Author Emily Chen: "Brown's departure from Forza to build something fresh feels like a moment the racing game genre badly needs, and Clutch's obsessive detail work on worn-in vehicles suggests he's serious about changing how these games handle authenticity."
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