Racecar Crashers, which is now available to play on PlayStation®5, was developed using a custom-built C++ game engine, as a result of final-year modules of the Computer Games Technologies course at Sheffield Hallam.
The core programming team, Trajectile Interactive, who all graduated with 1st class degrees in 2025, consists of Luke Hibbert, Charlie Edwards, Gergő Kocsis and Aliyaan Zulfiqar.
The team said: “Racecar Crashers is, by far, our most ambitious project to date. What started out as a university module has grown to so much more. It's been such a long journey to get to where we are now, but it's been so rewarding to see all our passion and efforts come together as a published product. It's been an incredible privilege for us to work with the PlayStation5 development kits, thanks to Sheffield Hallam.
“We've already had so many opportunities through Steel Minions, including appearing on TV and attending several exclusive game events and comic cons. We're very confident that having Steel Minions publish this game will open so many more opportunities for us all within the industry."
In the teams own words, Racecar Crashers is a high-octane, couch multiplayer, competitive racing experience, where up to four friends (or enemies) compete to be the last car standing.
The students created the game engine, a collection of software tools and programs used to make games, from scratch.
Design and development started in early January 2025, with inspiration coming from classic titles such as MicroMachines and more recent competitive titles such as Speedrunners.
Steel Minions, Sheffield Hallam University's own commercial game development studio, were previously the world's first university to publish student-made games commercially on the PlayStation Portable, PlayStation 4 and PlayStation VR.
Andrew Hamilton, Course Leader, BSc Computer Games Technologies, said: “Whilst we are only the second student-made game in the world to be released on PS5, we are the first to achieve this using a completely custom-built game engine, created entirely by our students from the ground up. That’s an extraordinary technical and creative milestone. It demonstrates not only the calibre of talent we’re developing here but also the level of industry-standard work our students are capable of producing. This is the highest accomplishment we could hope for on the course – and the students have absolutely hit it out of the park.”
