Bugbear Entertainment is a Finnish video game developer that focuses solely on racing games. Founded between the end of The '90s and the Turn of the Millennium, they've since produced a lot of original as well as several licensed titles. Most have been very well received and the studio is, despite its size (40 people), considered an important innovator in the racing game genre.
Bugbear Entertainment's Official website
Bugbear Entertainment's Community Forums
Games developed by Bugbear Entertainment:
- Rally Trophy (2001) - PC
- Tough Trucks (2003) - PC
- FlatOut (2004) - PS2, Xbox 360, PC
- Glimmerati (2005) - N-Gage, Nokia
- FlatOut II (2006) - PS2, Xbox 360, PC, Macintosh
- FlatOut : Ultimate Carnage (2007) - Xbox 360, PC
- Sega Rally (2007) - PSP, Sega
- Ridge Racer Unbounded (2012) - PS3, Xbox 360, PC
- Wreckfest (2015) - PC
Tropes concerning this developer:
- Author Appeal: Their penchant for inserting goofy or surreal humour into their games, just for Rule of Funny.
- Cool Car: Be it period-accurate Real Life cars or fictional cars, this is an absolute staple of pretty much every game they've ever made.
- Channel Hop: Being an independent studio, they frequently switched and switch their publishers. Even the FlatOut series changed publishers over time, due to the unexpected bankruptcy of the publisher of the first game in the series.
- Dueling Games: Rally Trophy had a bit of this with the second and third installment of the Colin McRae Rally series.
- Genre Throwback: Rally Trophy (1960s-1970s European rally racing) and the first FlatOut game (1970s US demolition derby), with hints of Retraux thrown in here and there. Later FlatOut installments kept most of the basic elements from the first game, but eschewed this trope. Wreckfest goes on a similar direction as the first two FlatOut games while also adding rallycross, folkraces and banger racing in the mix.
- Mascot: The
silly-looking bedsheet ghost in their logo. Making the developer's name a meaningful one, given that "bugbear" is an old-fashioned synonym for "spook" or "ghost". The logo itself has remained virtually the same ever since the studio's founding. - Surreal Humour: A frequent little touch in many of their games, from the talkative and complaining co-driver in Rally Trophy to the over-the-top demolition derby races, crashes and minigames in the FlatOut series. The latter frequently border on Gallows Humour.
- Updated Re-release: FlatOut : Ultimate Carnage is one for FlatOut II.
- Wacky Racing: The FlatOut series, full stop.
