15 Best Games That Let You Build Your Own Car
Even though cars are fun to drive, sometimes you just want to put together your own to make it more unique.
The use of cars is a game mechanic that game makers keep coming back to. Customizable cars in games let you make your ride look cool, and in some cases, you can even help set up your car by being able to change almost everything about it.
Games with these kinds of rules can keep you entertained for hours. Sometimes they are used to strengthen the main loop of a racing game, but sometimes the racing part is just an addition. In any case, pulling is just as fun in a virtual world as it is in the real world.
Mad Max
Whoever has seen a Mad Max movie knows that it’s about cars. The car customization choices are one of the most unique parts of the Mad Max game. It also has a beautiful open world and fun combat-based gameplay.
Mad Max doesn’t just let you drive one car around the wasteland. Instead, it gives you a bunch of different body types and lets you change and improve almost every part of your car. Since you spend a lot of time in the car, it feels like you’re just leveling up your character. It’s a great game, and people can’t wait for a sequel or remake.
Automation
From the appropriately named Camshaft Software, Automation gives you the tools to work on current vehicles and change them however you want. If you’re really good at designing, you can even build a car from scratch.
If you already know a lot about cars, the game’s approach to realism is a clear advantage: while some games only let you change a few things about your car, Automation lets you change what seems like every screw and bolt on it. After that, you can run a car business and sell cars you made yourself.
Gran Turismo 7
The Gran Turismo series has a lot of customization choices. You can race a car, but the real fun comes from tuning your cars, changing their looks, and making performance-based changes to take your vehicles to a whole new level.
You have pretty much full control over your cars and what they can do, and the racing part of Grand Turismo isn’t too bad either. A mechanic’s dream is to be able to jump into a car they just fine-tuned and see right away how well they did on Turismo’s beautiful tracks.
Grand Theft Auto 5
Grand Theft Auto 5 is a lot of fun to play for a long time because there are so many things to do. Being able to customize cars in depth is just the icing on the proverbial gameplay cake.
You can change everything about your rides and even test them out online to see how they run. The mod community also helps to add more layers to the game’s car building, even letting real-name brand vehicles into the game. After you’ve upgraded your car, you can take on the tricky races in the online part of the game.
Need For Speed Underground 2
In Need for Speed: Underground 2, which is about street racing, there are many ways to make your perfect car. In Underground 2, you can make a lot of changes to the way a car looks. You can also change a lot of things under the hood.
There are a surprising number of choices you can make about how your cars run, especially since the Need for Speed series is more of an arcade racer than an accurate car simulator like many of its competitors.
The Crew 2
This open-world racing game from Ivory Tower lets you take control of cars, F1 racers, boats, and even bikes on its beautiful sandbox map. In The Crew 2, you can change a lot about your car. This makes it go faster, handle better, and look cooler all at the same time.
All of this takes place on a game map that looks like a small version of the United States. Even though the game got mixed reviews when it first came out, it did show some people how fun an open world and player customization could be in a racing game.
Lego Bricktales
In Lego Bricktales, a physics-based bridge-building game, there is, as you might expect, a lot of building to do. This game is perfect for Lego fans who are more interested in the technical side of things. One of the best parts of the game is how hard it is to build a car.
There are no names to talk about and no performance problems to worry about. The main idea behind the game is “here are some parts, now make something good out of them.” Even though you don’t get to race the car, the best part is probably building it, right?
Forza Horizon 4
With Forza Horizon 4, where do you start? Are you looking for quick-change choices that make it easy to upgrade your car quickly? Done. Do you want to carefully look at every part to make the best race machine possible? This time.
Once you have your dream car, you can make a route through the open world, which is a beautiful creation based on Great Britain. If you’re really sure of how good you are at making cars, you can choose a hard route to see how far your car’s design can go.
Car Mechanic Simulator Series
Car Mechanic Simulator is probably the video game that lets you work on real cars the most. The main loop is all about using tools to fix cars, make improvements to your garage, and fix up old cars.
There are more than a thousand parts, which cover almost every part of a real car. If something breaks, you can not only get a new part, but you can also choose to fix a broken part if you want to. For good measure, this game also has a race simulator, so you can see how badly you put your rust bucket together.
Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts And Bolts
Even though Banjo-Kazooie isn’t usually known for its vehicles, Nuts and Bolts is a fun adventure for the famous team. You spend your time in the game getting parts for vehicles and blueprints so you can finish challenges in many different worlds.
There are more than 1,600 different kinds of vehicle parts that can be used to make cars, helicopters, subs, hovercrafts, boats, planes, and more. Critics said it was a very deep creative experience that let you use your mind to move through the levels and the hub world.
The Legend Of Zelda: Tears Of The Kingdom
In The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, you can build weird cars that can help you solve puzzles. You can move around Hyrule at your own pace with planes, cars, boats, and rockets.
Twitter is full of pictures of the cars you can make. Some people have even made cars that aren’t safe for work (NSFW) because you can make so many changes. With the joints on Zonai cooking pots, it’s amazing that you can build all-terrain cars that can go over huge rocky hills.
Dirt Rally 2.0
Dirt Rally 2.0 is a pretty good follow-up to the original game. It keeps the original’s focus on driving simulation and adds a few choices to make Drive Mad easier to play. The only thing that makes it easier to drive in the world’s most famous races is that you can customize your car in a lot of ways.
Even though cars don’t have nearly as many ways to look cool on the outside, there is almost no limit to how finely you can tune the different parts on the inside. If you don’t like how a car drives, it’s easy to open it up and start turning knobs.
The Long Drive
The Long Drive‘s form of car building is less about making custom cars and more about keeping the one you already have in good shape. Since your car might not stay in perfect shape over the course of your infinite trip, you can repair its chassis by taking parts from other cars or randomly generated buildings.
Even if your car isn’t broken, sometimes stealing a better engine or a newer set of external parts can make it run better and look better, giving you something to do as you drive through the endless, quiet desert.
Project Zomboid
If you want to live longer than a few months in Project Zomboid, you’ll need to get a good car, even if you don’t get to take part in any car-related chaos in the beginning. In the world after the zombie apocalypse, you actually have to look around for the parts you need to build and customize a car.
Project Zomboid isn’t just a driving game, but it has a lot of different cars. You can make a mascot truck move like a Corvette or, more likely, put the best parts you can find into a Honda Civic until it breaks down after 2.5 miles.
Saints Row 4
The vehicle mechanics in Saints Row 4 shouldn’t be nearly as deep as they are, since the game’s superpowers are much better for getting around, but you can’t really complain about extra material when it’s this polished.
In the Saints Row style, you can make your car as silly as you want and add dangerous spikes and a ridiculous amount of nitrous oxide. Even the golf carts can be changed, so don’t worry that your version of the president won’t look like a complete and utter maniac.
