Milestone talks about Screamer's King of Fighters connection: "We kind of looked at it for inspiration and did our own take on it"

While Milestone does have experience with the arcade racing segment in the form of games like Hot Wheels Unleashed, it is better known for its simulation racing projects like the Ride series. It's because of this that Screamer stands out as one to watch, as it's a game that feels very unique to the kind of project we tend to get from the Italian studio.

With launch just over a month away and planned for PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X/S on March 26, we recently had the chance to sit down with game director Federico Cardini to learn more about the project and how it's actually inspired by a very famous and long-running fighting game franchise, namely King of Fighters.

Cardini told us in an interview you can see below with localised subtitles: "Sure well you see first I mentioned the fighting games and they are another big inspiration for this game, especially King of Fighters. Our creative director Michele Caletti is a big King of Fighters fan and from the very beginning he wanted to have this game where characters have their own style and their own kind of motif and they are organised in a team like your King of Fighters teams. So we kind of looked at it for inspiration and did our own take on it."

Speaking about the matter in further depth, Cardini continued: "We have these teams of characters with one leader and two members. They drive slightly different cars. The leader cars are more performative and harder to drive while members are more welcoming. Let's say they both have reasons to be played throughout the game and you know in various game modes. Each one of them since they have a very specific motif have a different backstory and a specific design for their cars. So the cars of each team have been designed after the characters and their story has been decided.

"So we knew for example that we wanted our you could call the main team, the Green Reapers, to have kind of a military background but not really be into racing at all and so they joined the tournament on a quest of vengeance but they don't have cars and therefore their cars have been designed especially to look like they have been assembled from scratch because that's actually what happened. They bought them from a guy, you learn this at the very beginning of the story, and they're not really what you would expect racing cars to be and all teams have kind of their own motif. We have the Japanese Idol group, we have the Megacorp guys, we have the scientists. So it really helps us stand out a lot with the designs of the car. It lets us kind of experiment with what a car can be while still being realistic."

For more on Screamer, stay tuned as launch is just over five weeks away.