Forza Horizon 6’s New Rush Events Mix Showcase-Style Spectacle With a More Replayable Hook – IGN First

Showcase events have been a part of the identity of Forza Horizon games ever since the 2012 original. We’ve pitted a Ford Mustang against its WWII warbird namesake, and we’ve gone up against a… legally distinct, delta-winged behemoth that looks suspiciously similar to an Avro Vulcan in an Aston Martin of the same name. We’ve raced against trains, monster trucks, and even hot air balloons. They’re brilliant advertisements for the Forza Horizon series brand of racing, they’re eye-catching, and they’re just about as fun to watch as they are to play.

They are, however, events that an overwhelming cohort of Forza Horizon players only do once.

“So we went back and looked at our telemetry from Forza Horizon 5, focusing in on Showcase events,” says level design director Tom Dillow. “And we noticed, for the most part, our Showcases are one-and-done.

So the player gets given the Showcase as a reward, they go there and have an amazing three minutes, but then they drive off and there’s no incentive to return. “So the player gets given the Showcase as a reward, they go there and have an amazing three minutes, but then they drive off and there’s no incentive to return. Now, we do try to remedy this in our live program, where we’ll take an existing showcase and we will change the time of day and the weather and the car choice and the music, and we find a lot of our players will return and play that event, but once that’s done, they drive off and there's no incentive to return again.”

The solution, it seems, is Horizon Rush. Horizon Rush is a new event type where we’ll race across wild obstacle courses through some of Forza Horizon 6’s most interesting locations. Each course will be a timed race against the clock, and the stages are split into a bunch of distinct sectors along the route – so we’ll be able to track where we’re losing or gaining time. Horizon Rush races can be played solo, in co-op, or in competitive multiplayer.

There will be three Horizon Rush events in total: one in the dockyard in Tokyo City, which I’m demonstrated during my visit, another at the ski resort in the Alpine region, and the other on the coast, at a spaceport.

“Where we may or may not make a rocket take off during that event,” grins Dillow.

Horizon Rush events will sit alongside Forza Horizon 6’s two traditional Showcase events as what are known as ‘Milestone’ events, and they’ll be unlocked as we earn wristbands through the career mode. The team explains these events will be bookended by the ‘Invitational’ event, and the Legend Island event.

“So, it all started for us back in concept, where we sat down and we initially asked ourselves, ‘How do we build upon the success we’ve had with Showcase events?’” says Dillow. “Now, as someone like myself that’s been at Playground for 15 years this year, I’ve worked on all projects, all DLCs, and I’ve worked on a lot of Showcases in my time as well.

“I personally know how important they are to Horizon, and we still have two incredible showcases in Forza Horizon 6; anyone that watched our Developer_Direct asset would’ve seen the tease for our very own Horizon mech, called Chaser Zero, which is awesome. But we wanted to build a Showcase-adjacent event type, and if we were going to do that, we wanted to maintain that Showcase DNA.

“Now, when I talk about Showcase DNA, I mean high-adrenaline events, which include helicopters, planes, exciting slow-mo moments, cinematic moments, engaging heroic moments. They are just pure spectacle, and that’s what a Showcase is.”

The key to Horizon Rush, however, is replayability.

“If we build these amazing events, we want our players to enjoy them over and over again,” says Dillow. “And then we asked ourselves, what does replayability mean to us? And for us it was a high score, or a better time. It was course mastery – so being easy to play the first time, but hard to master. And, most importantly for me as a level designer, it was about it being fun. If it’s not fun, I’m not going to go and return and play it. So that’s what replayability meant to us.”

If we build these amazing events, we want our players to enjoy them over and over again. In addition to the desire to build something that players would be more inclined to attack over and over, a lot of the inspiration for these Horizon Rush events came from the kinds of custom events the Playground team observed the community making with Horizon’s UGC tools.

“In Horizon 5 we’ve got this incredible UGC tool called Event Lab, which basically lets our players create events of their own imagination and place whatever props they want,” says lead producer Gareth Davies. “And there were a couple of things that kind of aligned with what we were already thinking for Horizon Rush.

“So we had this high adrenaline, high stakes, lots-of-spectacle, obstacle course-esque gameplay that we wanted to make. And it was kind of validated by what our players were already making for each other. So we see a lot of these kinds of events where players are making these obstacle courses, which are kind of sweeping around going through all these crazy obstacles.

“They tend to be quite difficult, the ones the players make for themselves, they’re kind of ‘only-up’ with cars in a way, which is always a kind of balancing act for our designers, because we don’t ever want to lock our players out of content or create a skill check that’s going to block people out of being able to play the game. So we wanted to make something that ticked that thing that players are interested in playing, but also was accessible to everyone and enjoyable to everyone.

“And then another event type that our players created was these maps called ‘no hesi’, or no hesitation, where it’s basically about just getting to the finish line as fast as you can, and they’ll place cars to weave in and out of and various other obstacles. And that again, was a kind of thing that we know there’s a fan base for it in our community. They’re already making these things for themselves, but they’ve only got available to them the tool set that is in Horizon 5. They can’t place all of the things that we can place as developers. They don’t have the control – the very fine detail control that we are able to make to really pull these events together. So yeah, we were excited that we knew that there was interest from players into making these kinds of things and for us to put our own Playground version of these events into the game.”

Forza Horizon 6’s dockyard Rush event, dubbed Pier Pressure, is characterised by huge jumps and snaking routes around (and over) towering piles of containers. A camera chopper hovers dangerously close and the car crashes through smashable billboards, and container handlers lift obstacles ahead at the last second, allowing you to pass under them. It’s certainly very Showcase adjacent. In the footage you’re watching you’ll note a rally-bred MG Metro 6R4 hustling through the stage, although in my preview it was its similarly untamed Group B brother, the Ford RS200, that was the hero vehicle.

“I had a moment not long after we’d wrapped up the docks whitebox,” says Dillow. “This was last year – and I got up from my desk, put my coat on to leave the office, and I walked past two separate people on two separate teams, on two separate floors of our building, headphones on, leaning in, pad in hand, and they were staying after hours to beat their own time on the docks, because it was a brand new thing at the time. And that was a lovely moment just to see, in a development environment, people wanting to do better on that course.

“We’ve had reviews of the docks where I asked a question last week in a review, I just said to someone, ‘Oh, what’s your best time?’ And that just pinballed around the meeting room and, before you knew it, everyone was talking about their best time, which section of the docks they have the best time on, and they were all competing with each other. And that just naturally came out of me saying, ‘Oh, what’s your best time?’ So I feel like we’ve already hit replayability, just in a development environment, and I’m super excited to see our community get hold of it and see what times they can set. 'Cause I'm sure they'll do better than us.”

Interestingly, Dillow explains that the team has taken a new approach to building premium event types like this, compared to previous games.

“We actually built the entire Rush locations around the Rush courses themselves,” he says. “The Rush courses take place in our gameplay locations which are whiteboxed by level design and have a heavy focus on gameplay.

“Typically, in previous games we would build the whole location in one go and work events in afterwards, however this time we built the Rush courses first and then built the locations around them. Each Rush course starts off with a paper design, so with the docks, for example, we knew we wanted to begin on a rooftop, drive through some containers, enter an off-road section, then finish at the warehouses. Instead of building the docks and then trying to work this route in afterwards, we built the course first in isolation and then built the rest of the dockyard around that course. This ensured a premium quality experience for Rush and a final result we’re very proud of.”

Typically, in previous games we would build the whole location in one go and work events in afterwards, however this time we built the Rush courses first and then built the locations around them. “Another really nice thing as well is that there’s three different events and there’s a real even split across the team about which their favourite one is and which one they enjoy the most,” adds Davies. “They’ve all got their own unique spin and there isn’t a front runner that is like, ‘Okay, that’s the best one.’ Yeah, even within our own team, everyone’s kind of got their favorites and is enjoying them all. So yeah, we’re pretty pleased with how they’ve all turned out.”

And what does the future of Horizon Rush look like in Forza Horizon 6?

“The good thing with our live program is that we’re quite able to pivot and make changes as we go,” says Davies. “So yeah, I guess we’ll be driven a lot by the data. There’s certain things that we can and can’t do once we’ve shipped the game in terms of things that we’re able to change and things that we’re not able to change.

“But yeah, there was stuff that we were thinking early on in Forza Horizon 5’s live program that we ended up pivoting away from that allowed us to bring in other stuff that was just driven by what our telemetry was telling us; what the community was telling us. So yeah, I wouldn’t rule anything out in terms of future Rush events, but also we kind of have to see how the players react to them.”

This wraps up our March IGN First dive into Forza Horizon 6, but if you missed any of our coverage, be sure to check out our discussion on the crafting of the world, the new open-world events, a close-up on seasons, and our look at the game’s new customisation options and crazier-than-ever Forza Edition cars.

Luke is a Senior Editor on the IGN reviews team. You can track him down on Bluesky @mrlukereilly to ask him things about stuff.