After what developer Bugbear Entertainment called a stretch of bad luck with their Kickstarter campaign failing miserably due to all the hardcore fans already having had (and taken) their chance to pre-order the game at the game's website for several weeks before the campaign even began, things are finally looking up to the Finnish lovers of destruction.

Though they struggled for a while to reach the 10,000 pre-orders milestone, they did indeed reach the goal right before Christmas. As if that wasn't good enough, the tally has been increased significantly since then as well. According to the official site, Next Car Game has now raised about $500,000 with over 17,000 pre-order copies sold. The fact that the game has already entered Steam's Early Access program and since then also made its tech demo sneak peek available to everyone who signs up for the game's newsletter, are both factors that likely helped the game reach the sudden success it now has.

As a big fan of the old FlatOut games, this is good news to me. And if you're a racing fan, then this is good news to you as well. If you haven't already, go check out the highly entertaining tech demo for yourself. Be warned, though; you likely won't be able to avoid pre-ordering the game after trying it out. Yes, it really IS that awesome.