Warner Bros. is reportedly developing a Mario Kart-like racing game that will bring together characters from the company’s extensive IP portfolio, including Adventure Time, Scooby-Doo, Tom Jerry and more. The go-kart racer is the production of San Diego-based Warner Bros. Games, which was shuttered in February along with two other in-house studios. Warner Bros. never announced the game, which is said to have gone through multiple iterations, from a free multi-platform title to a paid PC-only version.
WB San Diego is developing a Mario Kart-like racer
The information comes from Colin Moriarty, who claimed on his “Sacred Symbols” podcast on Monday that a former WB San Diego staff member contacted him to discuss the unannounced project. Sources told Moriarty that the kart racer in development at the studio, codenamed “Moonlight,” will likely be called “WB Racers” and “XDR,” or crossover drift racer.
Like Mario Kart’s Nintendo characters, the game will feature Warner Bros. IP, including Adventure Time, Tom and Jerry, and more. Moriarty claimed to have seen gameplay footage of Racer and said it was “heavily inspired by Mario Kart”. He describes the game as “drift racing running on Unreal Engine 5, with stylized graphics and detailed vehicle controls.”
WB San Diego staff told Moriarty that the project lacked “intent” and a “coherent approach” and went through several changes during development. According to reports, Project Moonlight is a free-to-play online game for PlayStation, Xbox, Nintendo Switch and mobile platforms. However, towards the end of the development cycle, the Switch and mobile ports were abandoned in favor of the PC version. According to reports, Kart Racing later became a paid PC-only version, with the console version shelved.
The game was reportedly approved during the pandemic and will be released through Steam Early Access. WB San Diego employed more than 100 developers during the game’s development cycle, which “started to fall apart last fall,” according to sources.
Despite a lot of work going into the game, it never launched. Sources say there was “considerable animosity internally” and that the kart racer never came out after Player First Games, another Warner Bros. Game Studios studio, had launched MultiVersus twice, but staff at WB San Diego felt it was unfair.
Last month, Warner Bros. shut down WB San Diego and Player First Games, as well as Monolith Productions. The gaming unit will lose $300 million (approximately Rs. 2,627 crore) in 2024. The company also canceled the Wonder Woman game it was developing and said it intended to refocus on “bigger franchises” such as Harry Potter, Game of Thrones and Batman after a string of underperforming games.