Seven early access driving games to keep an eye on

It feels like the ‘Early Access’ moniker is a way for studios to profit from half-finished games these days, but there are occasions when it genuinely functions as Steam intended: it’s a way for developers to allow their games to be played while they move towards a full, feature-rich release. 

With Early Access games, players should expect ongoing updates and a timeline for future improvements, but also understand the title they’re playing is a work-in-progress. It’s going to have rough edges, essentially.

With quite a few driving games under the Early Access banner – including the future saviour of sim racing, Assetto Corsa EVO (if you believe the hype), we thought we’d examine seven of the most interesting driving games to keep an eye on right now.

It’s not all sunshine and roses, unfortunately…

PISTA Motorsport

PISTA Motorsport is a racing sim focused on the Argentinian autosport scene. Developed by Assetto Corsa modding team REG Simulations, it appeared on Steam earlier this year, with our initial impressions leaving us colder than a Patagonian ice bath.

The graphics, sounds and physics were very rough and clearly needed a coat of polish. And I mean more than just a light coating of Pledge…

However, there’s reason to be optimistic, as the team recently released a road map up to the game’s full release at some point in 2026, with 12 new tracks and 12 new cars on the way. The game also has dynamic track evolution (including wet track surfaces) and VR functionality, with a few tracks and cars already included. 

That’s a solid base to work from for such a small team, with ambitious goals including the availability of a paid modding system, DLC and free updates.

It needs a lot of work, but it’s worth keeping an eye on if you’re a huge Argentinian motorsport fan. Fangio would be proud.

Rennsport

Ah, Rennsport. You can’t fail to be impressed by the ambition of Competition Company’s sim.

First unveiled in 2022, Rennsport has gradually opened up to players and was released to Steam Early Access on the 24th of September 2024.

It’s free-to-play, and will feature a combination of free and paid-for content in future, beginning with its first, three-tiered ‘Founder’s Pack’.

However, the Founder’s Packs can only be found within Rennsport and aren’t available via Steam. The top tier, the €69.99 Diamond Founder’s Pack, offers the Nürburgring Nordschleife, a Diamond dynamic car livery, a Platinum car livery, two car purchase tokens, ‘Your Name on a Race Track’ and an in-game Porsche GT3 R rennsport with an exclusive eVIN, which frankly, has the whiff of an NFT about it.

It’s an interesting way to present DLC and it’ll be intriguing to see how it pans out in future: it would seem its success hinges on the quality of Rennsport’s forthcoming content.

The sim is set to cover the full gamut of motorsport disciplines and already has licensing deals with Porsche, BMW, Mercedes-AMG, Audi, Aston Martin, Hyundai and Praga; with McLaren mooted to have cars in-game soon (although that rumour has rambled on for several months now). 

Rennsport uses Unreal Engine 5, so has the potential to look incredible. Unfortunately, this is one area where it requires a lot of work to compete with its peers, with jagged edges and choppy performance reported by many players.

Modding will be implemented too, with two community-made tracks already added to Rennsport’’s track roster (Orchard Road Street Circuit and Crest Da Cauras). However, it’s unknown how its much-anticipated mod marketplace will work in practice.

One of Rennsport’s successes (in terms of competition at least, but perhaps not in terms of viewership) has been the ESL R1 esports series, which had the biggest cash prize pool in the history of sim racing: $500,000.

Having esports professionals stress-testing the platform is a natural benefit to the developers of Rennsport, but to do it so publicly with an embryonic platform was a huge risk. 

We’ll see whether this pays off for them in 2025.

TrackDayR

Released in March 2021, TrackDayR is a Unity-powered motorcycle sim developed by MadCow. 

On release, it was focused on circuit-based two-wheeled action but quickly veered into the motocross, supercross and enduro worlds, replete with outlandish vehicles like the incongruous three-wheeled vehicles like the Sidecar MX 660cc 4 Stroke and BProto MX, as well as the fun Quad ATV-MX.

TrackDayR also features a mixture of licensed and unlicensed circuits, with the likes of Adria and Cremona included. Additionally, mods are allowed, providing players with limitless opportunities in terms of motorcycling content.

Now, all this wouldn’t work if the vehicle handling was poor but fortunately, the Italian developer has created very satisfying physics, with a constantly evolving tyre model providing intuitive handling.

Players control both the bike and rider’s trajectory using separate analogue sticks, so epic motocross-style jumps, wheelies and stoppies are possible. It can be unforgiving and tricky to get the hang of, but TrackDayR’s physics are ultimately very satisfying to master. 

The best part is that the sim is constantly fettled, with free major updates arriving at roughly one per month, which is impressive given the development team’s resources. TrackDayR will never have the gloss of a MotoGP game; it doesn’t yet have a proper career mode, for example.

But if you support it in Early Access through 2025 you’ll be getting a title oozing with motorcycling passion and content.

BeamNG.drive

BeamNG.drive first broke cover as a tech demo back in 2013, moving on to Steam Early Access in May 2015 (!). That’s nine whole years in EA, which arguably goes against the scheme’s spirit a tad.

Currently on v0.33, at this rate of development BeamNG.drive should enjoy a full release sometime in 2042… as long as our AI overlords allow it, of course.

However, BeamNG is a very good game, even in its unfinished state. There are plenty of innovative and off-the-wall driving missions to participate in, a powerful World Editor to get creative with and a solid handling model to master.

And there are mods. Lots of mods.

The BeamNG community has added countless vehicles, missions, environments and objects to the game, all accessible from the game’s proprietary Mod Repository. It’s an incredible resource, with the Beam team’s own content providing near-limitless opportunities with which to muck about with cars. And the game’s infrequent updates never fail to delight, including new cars, maps and graphics improvements free of charge.

The much-vaunted career mode also taunts us with its enjoyable premise, but a fully fleshed-out single-player experience is still tantalisingly some way off. 

However, at least the BeamNG developers have resisted the urge to release paid-for DLC, but with the game seemingly reaching saturation point in terms of sales it can only be a matter of time. 

Will BeamNG.drive ever escape Early Access? Possibly not, but when it’s this fun most players won’t care.

Le Mans Ultimate

Le Mans Ultimate is the sole survivor of Motorsport Games’ over-ambitious plan to develop several officially licensed racing titles and it impressed us with its excellent physics.

This shouldn’t have been a surprise given it’s heavily based on rFactor 2, which to many is the best-handling sim around. Sadly, it has also inherited a lot of the Studio 397-developed platform’s limitations, with slow loading times, bugs and incomplete single-player features frustrating the sim racing community. At least the packaging system is gone – argh, the flashbacks! 

Controversially, MSG is launching four paid-for DLC packs for LMU (two of which have already dropped), which is something of a faux pas for an unfinished Early Access title. Opinions have been mixed on this strategy, with many sim racers happy to support such an encouraging sim (and many more not quite so happy).

Sadly, it’s likely borne from necessity, with MSG floundering financially. Its latest round of cost-cutting measures has left the studio with a skeleton staff, with the sim’s road map suggesting the final DLC pack will be released in Q1 2025. 

Cool features like asynchronous multiplayer, VR and the game’s Hypercar virtual energy system are already in-game and showing tons of promise, but whether LMU or MSG will survive long enough to see them completed is another matter.

But with the company actively seeking a buyer we can only hope the game lives on so sim racers can enjoy a full-fledged World Endurance Championship simulator.

RaceLeague

Emerging in 2022, RaceLeague is an indie racing game with a twist: it has soft-body collision physics.

Ok, so that isn’t novel thanks to the likes of Wreckfest and BeamNG.drive, but for the small team at Oversteer Studios it’s a huge achievement, and coupled with the game’s satisfying handling model it’s a winning combination.

Sure, the graphics and sounds need a bit of work, but the fundamental building blocks are there to make RaceLeague a game to keep an eye on in 2025. 

Updates are few and far between, but when they do arrive they’re huge. Take June 2024’s v0.4 update as an example: it added two new cars, advanced soft body damage, dynamic puddles, functional windscreen wipers and a replay mode. 

It’s an astonishing feat considering most of it is down to the work of one man: Jali Hautala.

RaceLeague also has a hilarious track editor, which allows players around the globe to create and share their custom creations, with online multiplayer available for those who want to crash into their friends (purely to test RaceLeague’s damage model, of course).

Which Early Access sims are you most looking forward to in 2025? Let us know in the comments below.

GeneRally 2

Having entered Steam Early Access in May 2023, Curious Chicken Games’ GeneRally 2 has steadily been receiving incremental updates.

The original GeneRally, a simplistic, top-down racing game by Hannu and Jukka Räbinä, garnered a passionate community just as internet speeds were breaking free of their dial-up shackles in the early noughties.

Despite never featuring PVP multiplayer, GeneRally was a huge online hit, with players sending their fastest race time replay files to forum administrators, ‘racing’ via a replay merging tool.

After a failed Kickstarter campaign in 2014, James Burgess of Curious Chicken Games took on the challenge of bringing a spiritual sequel to Steam, sharing the original’s focus on arcadey handling mixed with a powerful track editor.

Indeed, technological advances now make it easier than ever to share custom circuits via the Steam Workshop, with a dedicated online PVP mode set to be implemented shortly.

Free monthly updates are a regular occurrence alongside regular developer blogs, so players are kept well-informed of GeneRally 2’s progress. Major UI and AI tweaks are in the works at the moment, with the Micro Machines-style physics a joy to master in the game’s wide variety of vehicles.