While our Developer Reflection series has been quite popular since its inseption, Creat Studios decided to go a step further - three separate reflections for three of their titles.

Today we speak to Sasha Alexandrov, Producer of Smash Cars and an upcoming, yet-to-be-announced action title, and some of his team about the development of their racing game, and what they plan to do in the future.

What were you most happy with during the game's development?

Sasha Alexandrov: The feeling that the game is becoming FUN and team consisting of highly experienced professionals.

Lead Game Designer: There were a lot of things: designing the tracks, vehicles and AI physics balancing, and a lot more!

Art Director: Certainly the best thing was designing the car bodies and inventing various graphical solutions for them.

Lead Engineer: I participated in Smash Cars development for PS2 back in 2003… as a junior programmer :). Now that we were working on the PS3 title, I was determined to make a game that would be better in every respect. We had a great team and we achieved our ambition!

What were you least happy with, in retrospect?

SA: Time pressure and feature cuts. In the middle of the project, we realized that what we making was just another racing game and we had to concentrate on thinking up design features which would make Smash Cars to stand out among other titles. We got stuck on it for a while and time became pressing.

To stay within reasonable budget and meet deadlines, we had to cut some features which were almost implemented. For example, in the middle of the island there is a playground for tricks: it is modeled and textured and ready for use, but the players never see it because game modes for this playground were removed from the game. We also had to remove some modes from Multiplayer.

What is the biggest lesson you're going to apply to the next game you make?

SA: There is no arcane knowledge I am going to reveal now. J But there is a set of basic rules everyone is aware of but almost everyone breaks in the hope to getting away with it.

So my lessons were the following:

Production team should start working only after all main features defining USP are prototyped and tested. We changed design in the middle of production and as a result had to change and balance the game physics and some elements of art….

Any game should have a phase of Polishing. Smash Cars had it and as a result the game looks and feels, well …polished!

[Smash Cars can be purchased for $14.99USD on the PlayStation Store. It is currently on special in Europe for half price.]