History of SpotRacers

A little bit of history about the game I put together through some researching. Thought some may find it interesting.

Some time before the game was created, a project was listed at the Technical University of Denmark (DTU) titled ‘Global Vehicle Image Recognition’ looking for expertise to research and develop the technology behind the spotter. This went on to form part of the basis of the game. Unfortunately the project has now been de-listed from the DTU website since I first found and read about it last year.

Before SpotRacers though, there was StreetCars.  Originally developed by Donkraft Digital ApS, a Copenhagen-based joint venture consisting of experienced app development house Cromian and studio Game Swing, makers of the acclaimed Stikbold! A Dodgeball Adventure.
The game went live around the middle of 2018 and was limited to players in Denmark. The following video gives a good look at what the game used to be like:

https://youtu.be/x5yMi3OXa4Q

In early 2019 Donkraft Digital was liquidated and further development on StreetCars was paused.  Fortunately that wasn’t the end for the game and it was picked up by newly founded studio, Level Up Garage. Established in June 2019 Level Up Garage, a small team based in Copenhagen consisting of 6 experienced people from the gaming industry continued with its development.

With eventual plans for a global release in the pipeline, the game was renamed SpotRacers in early June 2020 due to issues with other apps and the original StreetCars name in other countries. Later in June SpotRacers went live once again in Denmark. It was a brand new app with more features and replaced the StreetCars app. Progress for those Danish players in StreetCars was unfortunately lost and they started over in SpotRacers.

In August 2020 the team held a competition on Facebook asking for suggestions for what should appear in the middle of the roundabout in Soft Suburbs! The winners suggestion was modeled in to the game and is what you see on the roundabout in Soft Suburbs today.  The game continued to grow through 2020 and in to 2021. In May 2021 the game was released in England, bringing players from both countries together. This was shortly followed by releases in Norway, Sweden, Iceland and Finland.

On June 14th 2021 after discovering the game a few weeks prior (and becoming addicted to it),  I started the SpotRacers Fanbase Facebook group. In turn, this lead on to the creation of the ‘SpotRacers Base Stats List’ which in itself grew with the group membership and the increased number of submissions to the database by the players.  This evolved to include the best SpotRacers to spot based on their base stats, database search facility and other features now embedded in to this website.  Members of the Level Up Garage team silently frequent the Facebook group an your feedback is welcomed and taken on board regularly.

Only a few months after the first phase of the global release, in July 2021 the game went live in Australia and New Zealand.  From it’s re-release in 2020 through to it’s global roll out, the team consistently provided updates to the game. Alongside bug fixes and improvements, it received visual improvements with many models receiving updates.  New features such as night mode were added and several new tracks were added to the line up.

In August 2021 the game launched in one of the biggest territories yet – the USA.  The updates continued and somewhat fittingly following the USA release, the Monster Truck stadium and big wheels were added to the game in September 2021. By November 2021 and thanks to the global roll out, our Facebook group had reached 300+ members and growing. Towards the end of 2021 we received another new track – Leafy Lessons. Finally, on the 14th February 2022 SpotRacers went officially worldwide, releasing in all other territories. In 2022 we continue to see more model, shop and spotter updates and just recently another new track was added – Restless Route.

Over the last couple of months SpotRacers has gained significant numbers, helped in part by featuring in Apple’s App Store in the US and the EU and making it as game of day in the US App Store.  SpotRacers was also nominated for several awards at the SpilPrisen 2022 Danish game awards and received the award for “Best Emergent Experience” towards the end of April 2022. The spike in players, whilst obviously a good thing for SpotRacers unfortunately caused the servers to go offline for a few days in early May 2022 due to issues with the third party backend. However, the issue was eventually resolved and players were rewarded with a special Toolbox for their patience.

To date, SpotRacers has continued to receive many updates as the player base grows. The game has received over 100k downloads on the Google Play Store with a rating of 4.2/5 and similar rating on the Apple App Store. Our group has also continued to grow alongside it, with nearly 900 members now and the database has close to 3000 entries!

It is evident that the team at Level Up Garage really are passionate about SpotRacers and constantly monitor and listen to the players, quickly reacting at times to feedback which is great.