New game from former Forza Horizon creators models all of Monaco, but on an enlarged scale

Maverick Games claims to have modeled all the streets of Monaco in Clutch, its open-world racing game. With poetic license: the principality has been deliberately enlarged beyond its real proportions to make room for driving. It’s Monaco completely complete, but bigger than the real thing.

The British studio is made up of Playground Games veterans and led by Mike Brown, former creative director of Forza Horizon 5. He was the one who presented the new video of the game at the Future Games Show, a digital event parallel to Gamescom, in Cologne.

The map is on the French Riviera and goes far beyond the principality: coastal roads, mountains, gorges, vineyards and cities. Within Monaco, you can drive both along the classic layout of the Formula 1 circuit and through everyday streets, with individually modeled buildings to avoid the repetition of generic facades.

Two brothers, a tournament and a harpoon on the hood

The campaign is narrative and follows the brothers Theo and Cass Martial, professional drivers by day and clandestine competitors by night. They compete in the official RK1 tournament and, in parallel, the street circuit.

The physics model is its own and, according to the studio, was calibrated to punish inaccuracy. But there is an ingredient that pulls the game away from realism: the cars receive the so-called Clutch Tech, equipment with a Fast and Furious atmosphere. In released images, one of them fires a harpoon and makes the turn hanging from the cable.

There are also police chases, escape missions, collectibles and a shared open world. The Steam page lists solo, multiplayer and multiplayer modes between different platforms.

Change of distributor the day before

A chapter that hardly had any repercussions: Clutch changed distributors days before Gamescom. The game was going to be published by Amazon Games, but the two companies parted ways. On August 24, the French Focus Entertainment signed the contract — it is the publisher’s first foray into the open-world racing genre.

The release is scheduled for spring 2027 in the Northern Hemisphere, that is, between March and June, with no set date. It comes out for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S and PC. In Cologne, the public had their first chance to play a demo version.