We got our first look at Trailmakers, a sandbox construction game that looks like Besiege but with cars and planes, at PAX West earlier this year. Today, developer Flashbulb Games announced Trailmakers will hit Steam Early Access on January 31, 2018, with a free open beta weekend planned for January 11 - 14. It will cost $20 at launch, and its Steam page says the price "will be reviewed" when the Early Access period ends. 

Flashbulb says the Early Access build will feature three game modes. Creative mode is singleplayer and gives you infinite resources to build the car-plane-thing of your dreams. There are over 40 vehicles parts in total, including a "transformer part" that lets you switch forms mid-drive. Expedition mode is also singleplayer, but comes with a specific goal: reach the other end of an obstacle-laden island. So, you have to design a vehicle capable of scaling cliffs and clearing gaps, and then drive it yourself. 

The third mode is Dethroned, a multiplayer mode described as a "fusion of capture the flag and king of the hill." Up to four players can queue into a match to built battle vehicles and crash them into each other in the noble name of science. Flashbulb reckons their "physics-over-network" tech will keep matches "synchronized perfectly between players," which is a bold claim for an Early Access game. 

You can learn more about Trailmakers in our interview with creative director Mikkel Thorsted, and on its official site. 

In development by the Copenhagen-based Flashbulb Games, Trailmakers is an vehicle construction game in the style of something like Besiege. Using modular pieces, you throw together wheeled and jet-propelled machines of your own creation with few limitations.

There's a sandbox mode, of course, but you'll also be able to play Trailmakers in "Expedition" mode, where you try to navigate across the map by building and modifying vehicles that overcome the obstacles you face, like super heavy winds, or long gaps that you need to jump across. Both modes will have eight-player multiplayer.

Trailmakers should hit Early Access on Steam at the end of this year. Hear me chat with creative director Mikkel Thorsted in the video above.