We’re big fans of Star Wars: Galactic Racer, having given the fast and punishing racing game five stars in our review. We also spoke to developer Fuse Games to better understand how it recaptured the Burnout spirit so well in the game. And it was then we heard about Fuse’s unique approach to prototyping Galactic Racer.

“What’s the fastest way we can get ideas down and then talk about them?” Fuse Games CEO Matt Webster told Eurogamer. “Modern engines are so capable that you can do a lot of it in-software, but there’s still something [about that which is] not as fast as getting a written idea down.”

Creative director Kieran Crimmin added: “There’s a prototyping tool for every kind of system that you want to prototype, and the one that you pick should be the one that gets you there the quickest, and gets you to validate the emotion the quickest.”

In Galactic Racers’ case, the tool was a board game, which had Post-It notes stuck to it that the team used to map out the game’s upgrades and meta progression systems. “I mean, I say ‘board game’: a lot of it is Post-Its and a scribble and some dice,” Crimmins said. “But we’re trying to validate those feelings as quickly as possible, o you just pick the best tool for the moment.”

Elsewhere in the interview, Crimmins explained the importance of distilling game-feel in playable game prototypes and testing them quickly to see if players shared the same feelings about them.

“We like many things,” Crimmins said. “We have loads of ideas, and we have references and emotions that we’re trying to get to. But you can’t know if you’ve got game-feel. You can’t know if you can feel the system until you can play the system. So we just try and get into [the] prototype [stage], get it into our players’ hands. See if they’re feeling those emotions.

“Rather than worry about whether it’s the right set of things,” Crimmins added, “we worry about getting it as a play experience as quickly as possible and seeing if it feels right.”

In the Star Wars: Galactic Racer Eurogamer review, Christian Donlan was enamoured with the game’s ability to merge modern games’ unlockables and Roguelite traits with the tight course design of classic games. “Galactic Racer never forgets that between the loot and the loadout and the story choices this is still a racing game. The game has that ceaseless full-ahead pelt that Burnout offers and each corner is a set-piece, even before you tip your Skim Speeder onto one edge,” Donlan wrote.