How Playground Games made Forza Horizon 5: Hot Wheels a wild ride for all the family

The Forza Horizon 5: Hot Wheels expansion is the most family-friendly addition to the Forza series so far. Where Forza Motorsport is trying to accurately simulate the fastest cars on planet Earth, and Forza Horizon has you racing those same vehicles across some of the lushest open worlds available on Xbox, this brand new DLC has a broader objective: Create a high-octane racing experience that is fun for all, no matter your age or experience with the genre, right from the outset. 

"In our main games, we kind of go, 'Right, we want to get you in a really fast car really quickly', because that's part of the promise of a Forza title. But in an experience like this, where you know that you're gonna bring in a lot of kids who might be seven or eight years old, this might be the first game they've ever played so you don't actually want to do that," says Mike Brown, creative director. "You don't want to get them bouncing around a volcano in a 300mph car, because then it's not a great learning experience if they're new to driving games." 

Gearing up

From the very beginning of this Forza Horizon 5 expansion, you can zip across Hot Wheels tracks that rise up above four new biomes, with volcanos, canyons, and snowy peaks. It's a playground that lets you speed your way across a massive toy set in the driver's seat of your favorite life-sized Hot Wheels cars. But that's once you've unlocked them of course. Instead of giving you access to the fastest cars from the outset, the team decided to go down a more traditional route in terms of progression to ease younger players in.

"Something we did in this expansion was structure our campaign such that you start in slower cars, and you build up to fast cars, [which is] actually quite a traditional way to do a driving game campaign – and something that we haven't done in our main games for quite a long time," Brown continues. "That's why our campaign starts you out in slower cars and then unlocks the fast cars as you go. That entire campaign structure was, in part, born out of wanting to serve a potentially younger, more novice player." 

You start by joining the Hot Wheels academy and attempt to rise up its ranks. Brown says the progression cycle is built to appeal to Forza fans of all experience levels, and to ensure that all of the new content is reachable. "Major missions tend to be more rewarding, in terms of the medals that they give you towards campaign progression, and the minor missions give you a little more so you can progress a little faster," he says, explaining that the major challenges are "fairly accessible", like getting one star in speed traps or reaching destinations within wide time boundaries. "You can give players a pathway: Just work through these missions, which aren't particularly skill gated, and that gets you through the campaign." 

This structural shift isn't the only way Playground is trying to make a racing game that's "fun for everybody". The decision to have us drive slower cars at the outset of the expansion was done to help players get a handle on the controls, and understand the rhythms of the new gravity-defying racing lines at their own pace, although Playground recognized that this may not be enough. It's why new accessibility settings have been introduced – toggles that help tailor the game to your own situation or requirements. For example, the 'Motion Blur toggle' allows you to choose between long or short motion blur, or turn it off completely, while 'Stunt Steering Assist' can help you steer away from the edges of steeply tilted or inverted sections of a Hot Wheels track.

Toy wonderland  

Such accessibility features and changes to the structure of the campaign are there to ensure that as many as players as possible can enjoy what makes this expansion so broadly appealing – the chance to drive fully realized Hot Wheels cars. Whether you're new to Hot Wheels or not, you're sure to get a kick out of zooming around in beautifully rendered, life-sized toy car and that's thanks to Playground Games' meticulous attention to detail and research, with the team collaborating with Mattel throughout the creative process to faithfully translate the vehicles to the game.

Almost all of the cars in the Horizon series have existed in real life, with a few notable exceptions – such as the Final Fantasy Quartz Regalia and the Halo Warthog (the latter of which does now exist but was created using in-game data), for example – which allows Playground to really strive for authenticity. But many of the vehicles in this expansion, like the off-road Baja Bone Shaker, are purposefully larger than life, and necessitated a unique production process. "We asked Mattel if they would be happy for us to have a go at it [creating the Baja Bone Shaker]. They absolutely were, and it created a really kind of fun journey that we went on, where our vehicle design team were building it out and their reference – rather than being the full car – was one of the 1/64 scale diecast toys that we actually bought from a local toy shop. Then we had to scale it up, but you don't just make that toy and then scale it up with all of the mold details and things like that, because obviously it doesn't have headlights, it doesn't have actual brakes." 

The vehicle design team started building in all of the details, including features that a fully realized version would need in the game. Through the creative process, it became evident that Mattel had a firm grasp of just how the vehicle should look, as though it were a real car already. "We learned at that point that although the Mattel design team built this tiny 1/64 scale car, in their heads, that car is real and exists. And they're like, 'No, no, no, the clusters aren't like that. Yeah, they look like that, but they're actually this kind of cluster', and they pointed to some real life reference of an actual Baja 1000 truck. Because in their heads this car in their imagination is real, right? It exists," Brown explains. 

"And so we kind of met in the middle there where they were steering us to be more realistic, we were following the toy and actually being more toy-like, and they were kind of meeting in the middle with the car that we have in game. But [it was] a completely unique production for that car. We haven't done that for any other vehicle. So yeah, that one, I think, is one that was just especially fun for us creatively."

It's a real treat to ride around in a Hot Wheels car and see first-hand just how every little detail reflects how much care the design team took to make it a reality in-game. The same kind of creativity and attention was paid to the tracks, too, with Mattel sending "creates of their various toys" for the team to play around with and use as reference. From creating close replicas of particular features such as the motorized toy dragon that roars as you pass it, to being influenced by box art for the inclusion of the ice track, a lot of the pieces you see and drive across in the expansion were influenced by real toy sets. With all of this attention to detail, the expansion succeeds at making it feel as close to a Hot Wheels theme park as you can get. 

Imagination and creativity  

Bringing the extreme Hot Wheels cars to life with an attention to detail usually afforded to the Ferrari and Lamborghinis of this world is one thing, but Playground was also keen to replicate the sense of joy and imagination born out of sitting down with a physical playset. This is where Event Lab comes in, the creative hub introduced in Forza Horizon 5 captures a "core part of the Hot Wheels experience."

"Event Labs felt like a really natural fit," says Brown, speaking to your ability to now build tracks as wild as your imagination can muster. "Tech wise, it was quite challenging. There are 87 pieces, and about 80 of them have the ability to snap together. It's easy to manipulate it and break it if you want to. But that default experience of going 'I want this piece and this piece, and I'm gonna turn right and I want a jump', that all should just snap together in a way that is really easy."

Brown points to the variety of those 80 pieces as a highlight of the Hot Wheels expansion, as you're able to snap pieces of Hot Wheels track together and place them right into the base of the park map to build out from it. "We added build stubs into the base map so that you can use a stretch of road that we've built and then build on top of that. It allows for some real creativity… We're starting to see some stuff coming through the community now which is already super exciting for us."

Creativity is at the heart of Forza Horizon 5: Hot Wheels. From the unique creative process the team went through to accurately replicate toy cars, to the changes to long-standing game structure and progression systems, to the new accessibility features and Event Labs functionality – it's been a labor of love for Playground. Brown says it's all been worth it, if only because he has something new to play with his children. 

"I've got three sons, and my youngest is really obsessed with cars. He just loves Forza, and that's probably rubbed off from me, but he also loves Hot Wheels. So I had to keep it a secret from him for as long as possible, because kids can't keep secrets," laughs Brown. "As a dad, it's a really rewarding experience to be able to play it with my kids, and he absolutely loves it. Knowing the kind of gamer that he is, and the kind of experimentation he's going to want to do, is something that absolutely informed the creative process. I think that's natural for anybody when they're making something like this."

You can see just how successful Playground Games has been with its racing game built for all kids of all ages for yourself right now, with the Forza Horizon 5: Hot Wheels expansion available on Xbox Series X, PC, and via Game Pass.