We’ve waited a long time for a true Test Drive Unlimited sequel and the wait may not be that much longer. KT Racing, a French game development studio, is working on a new Test Drive game, and it sounds like it’ll be focusing more on the social side of things rather than the classic single-player experience.
Rumours first started to swill around a couple of years ago that BigBen Interactive was looking to get a Test Drive game made after it acquired the license from Atari. BigBen Interactive actually got its mitts on the license back in 2016, so it’s been a few years in the making and we’re just about due for something, right?
According to a poster on Reddit, the game will be set in South America, possibly Brazil, and that it’ll ship with around 90 cars. It’s also claimed that the game will release at the end of 2020 and will likely launch on the PS5 and Xbox Series X, and that it’s in development with a French game studio called KT Racing. But why should we believe some rando with a Reddit account? I did a little poking around and found that just a couple of months ago, KT Racing started hiring for a new game. A new Test Drive game. How do I know it’s Test Drive? 
They’re not even being subtle about it. It only gets more concrete when you click on one of the job postings. For example, click the Character Artist job and this is what it says:
As part of the development team of a massively multiplayer racing game deriving from the Test Drive licence, you will work under the supervision of the artistic director and be in charge of :
- Modeling and texturing realistic characters while respecting artistic and technical restrictions
- Modeling and texturing clothes and accessories
- Report on the advancement of the graphic resources’ development
So the next Test Drive game will be a massively multiplayer racing game deriving from the Test Drive license, to put it in the developers own words. I’m not sure that’s what Test Drive fans want to hear, but at this point, anything is better than nothing, right? We’ll see. Expect BigBen Interactive to make an announcement early next year with a showing at E3 2020 and then a cross-gen release. That’s my bet.
As for the details from the Reddit leaker, consider them rumours with a touch of ground to them, but nothing more.
In the meantime, I’ve sent a couple of emails to BigBen Interactive and KT Racing to see if they’ll elaborate further. They probably won’t.
Source: Reddit, KT Racing
