Eventually I got bored calling my new game “That car game” – I realised I needed a proper name for the game.

But choosing a name isn’t easy! I wanted something quite functional – big studios with huge budgets might be able to get away with abstract sounding names like Forza, but I need something that says exactly what my game is about. Without being too long. Or short. Or hard to say.

So we started a brainstorming exercise, writing out some key features of the game on my whiteboard. The island-based gameplay was always going to be a key part of the game, so I really wanted that in there. The other part started as just “Drive”, but the result “Island Drive” sounded like a Lighthouse Family song! Then I remembered my old 1974 MGB Roadster – 4-speed manual gearbox with Overdrive, and that sounded just right. So Island Overdrive it is then!

And here is a little preview showing a bit of progress. We have a new dynamic dashboard, terrain texturing courtesy of MegaSplat and thousands of trees thanks to the Critias Tree System. I’ll write more about these in later blog posts.