I think it’s fair to say that no-one was expecting the developer behind slightly shonky games as Bet on Soldier and The Cursed Crusade to become the next big thing in the racing genre, but here we are. The Parisian studio Kylotonn has been around a fair while, having shipped some 25 games since it was founded back in 2002, but it’s a name I – and I’m sure countless others – was unfamiliar with when it took over the WRC series back in 2015. It was a fairly inauspicious start, but the progress made since then has been nothing short of phenomenal.
Kylotonn made the decision to switch to making racing games for one simple reason – and it’s a pretty good reason too: studio founder Roman Vincent loves cars, and enjoys racing them too. He campaigned a E-Type in some vintage racing, a past-time I’m sure could get expensive given how much one of Jaguar’s finest sportscars is worth (“Well,” says Vincent, “the goal was not to crash!”)
“10 years ago, something happened,” Vincent recalls. “I don’t know why exactly, but I just realised that I really wanted to focus on what I love. It was a very personal thing.” That notion coincided with Big Ben renegotiating the WRC licence on which developer Milestone had been working on for some years – and Vincent sensed an opportunity.
