Mario Kart Live: Home Circuit dev shares blog post following announcement
Nintendo doesn’t typically work with external partners on Mario Kart games, but that’s exactly what happened with Mario Kart Live: Home Circuit. Velan Studios, a company in New York founded in 2016 by former Vicarious Visions heads Karthik Bala and Guha Bala, is leading the way on development. This is one of their first projects.
Once yesterday’s announcement was made known, Velan Studios shared a blog post about the company and a bit about the game itself. You can read it in full below.
Wow. Today is a big day for Velan Studios. We can finally talk about our first project, Mario Kart Live: Home Circuit for the Nintendo Switch system. It was revealed in today’s video presentation by Nintendo!
It’s been a labor of love, which took a massive leap of faith early on, first with our invention, and second in our amazing creative partnership with Nintendo. That’s spot on with our mission at Velan: Create breakthrough games that are MAGIC!
The Velan team is made up of a bunch of scrappy inventors and game makers who like to tinker and prototype new ideas - playing is believing. We take creative and technical risks that are sometimes surprisingly hard to do in this industry, particularly in AAA. Being independent allows us to take those types of risks.
Our studio was formed in 2016 by a handful of industry veterans. We’ve made some cool games in the past, but we want to build a new kind of studio, one that’s focused on discovery and really pushes gameplay in new, as yet, undiscovered ways. At the outset, our goal was to first build an awesome team and see where that leads.
Throughout 2017 we were in R&D, trying different experiments and ideas, looking at cutting edge research and tech. But for Velan, we’re always thinking about the end play experience. How does it feel? We’re not trying to chase market trends, cool tech demos or “safe bets”. Our goal at Velan Studios is to empower our teams to create something new that they are passionate about.
We’ll share a lot more about the invention story of Mario Kart Live: Home Circuit in our next blog post. For now, let’s dig into what was shown today in the reveal trailer.
Surprise! It’s Mario Kart in real life. It’s a totally new experience that retains the core play feel of the Mario Kart series we all love. Discovering new ways of playing when the digital world meets the real world through a mixed reality (MR) experience has been one of the creative joys of this game’s development.
You’ll notice the Koopalings are in this game. Whether you are playing in your living room alone, or with your friends on their own karts, you can share the thrill of driving and exciting competition. We love the ability to seamlessly combine digital opponents and real world racing with your friends. It is a new take on local multiplayer.
Putting your world at the center of play was the start. Creating your own courses was the next step (a first for the series!). The reveal trailer shows how you can take a simple design and evolve the circuits in very elaborate ways. It’s all about creative play, underpinned with tight, easily accessible controls for that classic, beloved Mario Kart feel. The development team has packed the game with items, obstacles, course themes and much more. Velan Studios is honored to be part of the 35th anniversary of Mario in such a groundbreaking new way.
We can’t wait to share more details on the game and most importantly, have you drive, build, and race on October 16, 2020!
