American McGee Pitches New MMO-lite Racing Game “BaiJiu Racer”

American McGee has been a busy man lately, what with his episodic game Grimm Volume 1 being fully released and Grimm Volume 2 looming on the horizon, but apparently there is no rest for wicked because according to his blog he is also pitching a new concept for an MMO racing game.

BaiJiu Racer is being described by McGee as an “MMO-lite racing game concept with China as the core theme” and has been in pre-production with his development company Spicy Horse for the past three months. McGee and Co. have already got all the materials ready to pitch the game to American and European publishers and he feels the game will be competitive in the online racing world. Currently it is slated to be published in China by Spicy Horse’s partner, ICEE.

Promising a “semi-realistic physics-based racing dynamic” with minimal power-ups, McGee goes on to mention on his blog that he feels BaiJui Racer will be able to contend with Mario Kart or KartRider and is the only Chinese-specific racing game that will include and authentic Chinese art, real-world locations, and the vehicles will be inspired by real Chinese cars.

Here are some of the key features pulled directly from the site:

• Distinctive art style featuring a timeless portrayal of everyday Chinese people and locations
• A clean and clear graphic style for UI
• Core gameplay focused on skill-based racing, avoiding fun-killing power-ups
• Strong narrative backbone and emotional drama – “everyone can be a hero”
• Unique and interesting vehicle designs based on real-life Chinese vehicles
• Track locations that reveal a China few foreigners have seen
• Risk reduction in production through use of 3rd-party tools and engine (UE3)
• A fast and efficient project schedule built on Spicy’s proven development processes
• Our Chinese publishing partner ICEE has a lock on the publishing rights in China. What we’re looking for now is a publisher interested in the remaining world-wide rights. We might also be open to territory specific deals with the right partners.

McGee has put a lot of his concept art for the game up on his Flickr account and has posted a sample of the “in the works” gameplay up on his YouTube Channel. It definitely looks more cute and cuddly than his previous works, but that does not mean that it will not be odd and zany as well, because it just would not be an American McGee game if it were too “normal”.

In the meantime, you can still get all the episodes of American McGee’s Grimm Volume One over at GameTap, and the first episode of Grimm Volume Two, The Master Thief, goes live next week on October 30.