How a German Dev Came to Build an Indie Crossover Racer

In just a week, Mateo Covic alias ZoroArts, developer of “Maki’s Adventure”, has brought indie devs together for a crossover indie cart racer project. With “Ultimate Indie Racing”, the young dev combines IPs like “Frogun”, “Smushi come Home” and more and is still looking for devs that want their game characters to participate.

The multiverse is in. From Nintendo smushing together their brands in racing or fighting formats to big digital and analogue plattforms like Fortnite or Magic The Gathering crosscorporationally bringing IPs together, crossovers are one of media’s biggest current successes.

With indie games on the rise and several indie game characters reaching cult status in the last years, it was only just a matter of time until the crossover hype reached the indie space. Again, one could say, because a first batch of indie crossovers came into existence in the mid-2010s, with projects like “Indie Game Battle” in 2015 and “Indie Pogo” in 2018. And while the latter was at least well received, the inspiration for crossovers of popular independent IPs had seemed to dry up for a while.

Enter Mateo Covic alias ZoroArts, maker of “Maki’s Adventure” and in-development game “Rogue Jungle”. When last we heard of him, he was pondering the “failure” of his first game, which nevertheless enabled his future career (see here for the German article, subscription needed). He is now trying to unite indie devs from around the world in a new community format, inspired by the most popular crossover IP. “I was playing Mario Kart with my brother and told him that I wanted to try to recreate the core gameplay and movement of Mario Kart in 24 hours. After 3 hours I posted a first prototype on Twitter”, Covic explains. “Then a dev friend of mine asked me if his game character ‘Bo’ could be in the game and that gave me the idea to develop an indie racer. The dev of ‘Frogun’ was the first to give me his 3D model so that I could build it into the game. The tweet in which I showed his char was then super well received and I have received dozens of requests and now have a decent line up of chars inside.”

As with his first game, Twitter (now X) was a driving factor in Covic’s motivation to flesh out a work in progress concept. The game announcement tweet showcasing his own game character Maki racing around garnered 30,000 interactions in a week and brought several indie devs into talks with the single dev. Right now he has four confirmed racers from other IPs in the game, an impressive feat after just a few games. These are Bo from “Bo: Path of the Teal Lotus”, developed by SquidShock Studios and published by Humble Games, Renata from “Frogun”, developed by Molegato and published by Top Hat Studios, Inc., Chick from “PaperKlay”, developed and released by WhyKev and Smushi from “Smushi come Home”, developed by SomeHumbleOnion and published by Mooneye Studios. Several others are planned but not yet ripe for public announcement, Covis says.

In talking his process with “Maki’s Adventure”, Covic already made clear that he works best in intensive work burst, so it’s no wonder the bones of the new project are already working competently, especially with the drive of his peers on social media motivating Covic. “I have already added a singleplayer time trial mode, the first basic track and the online multiplayer. You can already race online against your friends and I'm working with Unity and Photon PUN 2 as a networking solution. The game will have singleplayer, online and local multiplayer (with splitscreen), a tournament mode and the possibility to race with up to 10 players. There is currently no enemy driver’s AI planned but this can still change if there is enough interest in the game. I am working on the game solo and it will be a pure heart project without financial motives.”

For the game that currently runs under the working title “Ultimate Indie Racing”, Covic is now looking for more indie devs that want to participate. “I am currently still looking for games, whether in development or already released does not matter. But it would be good if the game already has a certain player or fan base. If you are interested, you can contact me via Twitter or by mail at zorodev18@gmail.com. I don't have a deadline but I will probably create a hype trailer with the first 10-15 games in July / August and go public to inspire as many indie fans as possible.”