I knew of the name, having seen it on plenty of FailRace videos, but I’d never jumped on it myself despite liking what I was seeing. You all should know how this story goes by now. Those BeamNG.drive videos were always fun to watch the cars slowly get destroyed as they did nothing but drive around a track, and now it was my turn – having bought it in the recent Steam sale.

I jumped on the freeroam of the USA maps included in the game, which are pretty much open sandboxes. The East Coast map was my first, where I just got a feel for how the handling of the cars worked while exploring. I found myself being slightly cautious but still displaying some exuberance as I drove around. If the vehicle got too damaged, it was easy enough to use the reset car button to get a new one. Or, if it was in a precarious position, reset it to the last spawn point.

The damage model is pretty deep, with any sort of impact causing damage to the car depending on various factors such as force, weight, and how solid the impact points are. Any damage to the vehicles will be felt by you, with small deformations around the wheels – such as bumper damage – causing friction against those wheels that will eventually damage them. If the radiator gets damaged, that will eventually affect the engine if it runs too hot. There’s a lot to enjoy with the physics engine of the game – even if all you want to do is slam a vehicle into some trees to see how it breaks.

The freeroam is enjoyable enough with the maps on offer. There’s quite a bit to explore with them, with each offering something different. Those based on real locations look great, with Italy being the greatest for me. That’s not to say the USA maps are bad, as Utah looks excellent with the desert scenery and rocky terrain. The racetracks within the game are also enjoyable to race through with these soft-body physics.

And speaking of races, these are included as time trials, which are very fun to tackle. Unlike with freeroam, there’s no resetting damage, so it’s a fine balance between going fast and not damaging the vehicle you’re using. There are plenty of time trials across all the maps, which makes for a good challenge if you want to complete them all. Along with the regular trials are something the game calls Light Runner. This takes you to the virtual world of Glow City – where everything is full of neon and a lot more crazy when it comes to the tracks.

Other included modes include scenarios, which provide a lot of set pieces to get stuck into that will test how well you can handle the physics of the game. Car chases, deliveries, or even more technical stuff such as getting down to the bottom of a very rocky and vertical route, getting a jump completely accurate to make the landing, or even completing a delivery with an almost destroyed truck. There’s a lot to tackle, along with in the campaigns, which feature more such scenarios – such as getting across a wobbly bridge.

An interesting addition is the feature of bus routes. Take on the task of being a bus driver, stopping at various points along the way to pick up more passengers and get them to a final destination. Now, this isn’t as in-depth as a true bus simulator. You won’t have to deal with people and hand out fares, but it’s a fun distraction from the more high-speed pursuits the game offers.

Being a sandbox, there’s a lot in terms of customisability. The fun stuff includes messing around with gravity to see how cars react when the force holding them to the floor changes. The HUD can be edited with plenty of widgets so you can see exactly what you want to while driving – and there’s a different set up for each of the modes on offer. If you so choose, you can even dive into the technical side of things and customise a vehicle with a very in-depth configurator that has options for every single part of the vehicle you’re controlling.

Along with all the base game content are the mods. Player made maps, vehicles, and even challenges can all be added to the game through the built-in mod menu. There’s some pretty great maps around, though it can be hit or miss. Depending on how much work was put into them, the vehicles might not have the level of damage modelling that base cars do. There’s a mod for a Mini that I found pretty quickly, with it being a massively light, nippy thing. The first player-created map I added is fantastic, with a lot to do within freeroam.

I’m pretty happy to have bought BeamNG, then. A number of maps to explore, trials to complete, and a range of cars to absolutely wreck with the soft-body physics. There’s new updates always being added, such as recent new cars and a new testing map to go really crazy with those vehicles. This is one I’ll be returning to quite often, I feel. I can easily recommend it for any person who enjoys a driving game.

In fact, you can see the game in action from a challenge I set myself. The Castelletto to Norte Drive sees me take a visit to the Italy map and attempt to get to Norte (which I’m pretty sure just means it’s an unnamed northern city) from Castelletto.