With licensed NASCAR content and a new island to explore, The Crew Motorfest’s Season 9 update is mammoth. But the true standout addition is TrackForge, a powerful tool that lets you create and share custom circuits. Available for all players in beta, it takes cues from another popular Ubisoft franchise: Trackmania.
According to Creative Director Julien Hummer, this ambitious toolset took 18 months to develop and is the “biggest feature ever created for the franchise.”
“It was a very intense season for us,” he told Traxion. “We have multiple teams working on different seasons, and the Season 9 team worked for the past 18 months on TrackForge.
“It’s the biggest feature ever created for the franchise, and we are very happy to finally deliver this feature to our players. It was a long development because bringing user-generated content to a live game that wasn’t initially designed for it is a big task for the engine and involves a lot of people.”
Hands-on with TrackForge
Before building a track for custom race or time trial events, you must choose one of two kits: Motorsports and Coaster. Motorsports are circuit-style tracks designed for authentic, serious racing.
Coaster tracks, on the other hand, are more outlandish, featuring magnetic roads, massive jumps and gravity-defying loops. It’s effectively The Crew Motorfest’s answer to Forza Horizon’s Hot Wheels expansions.
After placing a starting grid, you can lay out ‘Modules,’ ranging from standard track sections to pit stops and waterfalls.
Then there are ‘Super Modules,’ which allow you to place larger, pre-built landmarks. Only 10 are currently available, but many are inspired by real-world locations, including Monaco’s Fairmont Hairpin. If more Super Modules are added, there’s scope to recreate your favourite race tracks.
With three building modes easily accessible via the touchpad on PS5, TrackForge is impressively versatile. For players who want to create a circuit quickly, Fast Build mode lets you link modules together effortlessly, with quick access to different straights and turns using the d-pad.
It’s possible to create a drivable track in minutes, though it’s sometimes difficult to line up the finish line module in complex layouts.
One downside is that you can’t freely rotate track pieces. To snap them together, both ends must match the corresponding colour highlight. For example, a banked turn with a yellow highlight on one end can’t be connected to a straight with a red highlight.
Library Mode, on the other hand, gives full access to the full suite of straights, corners, s-turns and decorative modules and lets you make simple modifications.
Alternatively, you can delve deeper and modify either the entire track or select modules in Selector mode, where you can manually adjust the banking of corners or add checkpoints. Whichever mode you use, the building process is swift and intuitive. It’s accessible, yet deep enough for experienced players.
Once your creation is complete with a validated finish line, you can test the layout, choose a time of day, music, number of laps and vehicle restrictions.
The Crew Motorfest’s team consulted with Trackmania developer
Any similarities between TrackForge and Trackmania, Ubisoft Nadeo’s long-running franchise that revolves around creating tracks, are no coincidence.
“We have Trackmania developers in the Lyon studio,” noted Hummer. “We met them when we started working on TrackForge to get their feedback on user-generated content, module creation and restrictions.
“It was very helpful for us to learn from them because they are very good at user-generated content and creating tracks. But we also wanted to create something that is very unique to The Crew Motorfest and The Crew brand in terms of accessibility, tools and freedom. We are giving players our own take on user-generated content.”
This isn’t the first time the franchise has experimented with custom events. In 2023, The Crew 2 introduced a Race Creator that let players place checkpoints on existing roads. This was effectively a precursor to TrackForge on a smaller scale.
“We gained a lot of knowledge from The Crew 2 because people who developed the [original] track creator are still in the studio,” said Hummer. “They shared a lot of experience and insights, which helped us shape our vision for TrackForge.”
“It was also important to work with the community. We had the opportunity to regularly discuss with engaged players who use the Race Creator.”
“We already have thousands of players creating tracks”
Of course, if you don’t want to spend time building tracks, you can try other player creations, with the option to rate them after a session. Tracks can be sorted by categories, with hand-picked recommended circuits featured on the main menu.
While you can apply a long list of filters such as game modes, vehicle categories, difficulties and lengths, you can’t search for specific tracks without an ID code.
“We already have thousands of players creating tracks in 24 hours,” Hummer told us. Since launching last week, the community has created over 30,000 tracks in five days. With every track set on the same island, we’re hoping that future updates will add more locations.
Considering it’s still in beta and released less than three years into The Crew Motorfest’s lifecycle, TrackForge already has a lot of promise in this early stage and we look forward to seeing how it evolves.
“We are working on quality-of-life improvements in the long run, based on player feedback,” Hummer revealed. “New kits are coming regularly – we are going to put more love and add new experiences for TrackForge.
“We have a big ambition for this feature,” he continued. “We released it early in the development cycle to ensure players will use and enjoy it in the long run.”
The timing of its release is ideal. With Forza Horizon 6 arriving in May, TrackForge should further set The Crew Motorfest apart from its main competitor and potentially increase its longevity for years to come.