Why I'm building OverTake GP

My first racing management game was one I built at school, out of mosaic sets: pegboards full of holes and little plastic pieces in eight colours. I had three sets, and I’d lay the boards out in different ways to make different tracks.

Eight colours meant eight teams. A dice roll set each car’s speed, and I moved every car by hand. I had rules for how a car took a corner, how it accelerated and braked, when two cars collided, how the tyres wore and how much fuel was left.

The racing was only half of it. Between races I worked out who got on with whom, which drivers moved to which teams, and how much money every team had left.

It wasn’t much to look at. But the feeling was already there: you make the calls, and then you find out whether you were right.

If you’ve read about OverTake GP Table, some of that will sound familiar. Dice still set the speed. The car still has to suit the corners, the straights and the braking zones of each track. Tyres still wear out, and cars still collide. In a way, I’ve been building this game since school.

Years later I put more than a thousand hours into Motorsport Manager on PC.

And still, no game in the genre has given me everything I want to see and feel when I run a racing team. So I’m making the one I want to play.

Two games to start with

OverTake GP is the big one: every part of running a racing team, in full, and open to mods. It’s the game I’ve been carrying around in my head for years, and it’s at the concept stage.

OverTake GP Table comes first. It’s racing team management in the form of a board game: you build your team on the board, then watch it race in 3D. It’s the furthest along, and it’s heading to Steam.

What you’ll find here

I’ll post here as things move: what I’m building, what works, what doesn’t yet. If you want new entries in your inbox, subscribe below.

And if you’ve ever lost a race on the last lap because of a call you made, you’re exactly who I’m making this for.