Project Cars 2 Already Announced, Crowdfunding

After several delays, Projects Cars finally arrived in early May. Just weeks later, developer Slightly Mad Studios have announced plans to crowdfund a sequel. That seems…soon.

As with the last game, Project Cars 2 is raising money on the World of Mass Development platform. There’s no stated budget or goal for the sequel, but it does have several reward tiers, ranging from £50 (about $45 USD) for basic access to the game to £10,000 (about $11,342) for crazy things like this:

Michelin-starred dinner with the Head Of Studio plus all costs covered at a luxury hotel in London and a luxury weekend itinerary including use of a Ferrari 458 Spider!

Slightly Mad Studios has already stated this doesn’t signal the end of development on Project Cars, with both projects at the same time.

Over the next year, players will see Project CARS grow, evolve, and continue to be updated regularly throughout 2015 and beyond via our ON DEMAND programme. But additionally, planning and work will now begin on the continuation of the franchise with PROJECT CARS 2 that contains substantial features and content deserving of a fully-fledged sequel.

The ongoing development of Project Cars is called the studio’s “on demand” program.

“We have another new Car Pack coming out soon, “said creative director Andy Tudor to me over email today, “which is sure to be a crowd-pleaser, as well as the availability of free car liveries in association with Logitech. Plus the team are heads-down hard at work on more content that won’t be seen until Thanksgiving. So rest assured—this is just the start of Project CARS.”

Fans reacting to the game’s announcement on its official website have not been especially kind:

It’s not much better on Twitter, either.

Of course, this is only the first wave of responses. Maybe it’ll change?

Granted, when a game ships, not everyone who helped build the original game are needed. It makes sense those people would be shifted over to another project—that’s how this works. What’s surprising is Slightly Mad Studios publicly announcing the sequel so quickly.

“Games however take a long time to make,” said Tudor. “Bearing in mind the vision we have for the game—the features we’d like to include, the direction we’d like to follow, and the timeline we’d like to release in—we need to start sooner rather than later and therefore a rolling schedule must be adopted whereby some of the team not actively working on On Demand content can work on the sequel.”

There’s no announced release date for Project Cars 2, but it’s planned for PC, Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and Steam OS. You can run down the entire feature set on the crowfunding site.

You can reach the author of this post at [email protected] or on Twitter at @patrickklepek