Playground Games' 2012 open-world racer turned street driving into a festival, where stunts and popularity mattered as much as the finish line.
Released for Xbox 360 on 23 October 2012, Forza Horizon is a Playground Games racer set in a fictional festival. It swaps race tracks for public roads in a Colorado-based map and rewards stunts with popularity. Its online servers closed on 22 August 2023.
Forza Horizon is a 2012 street racing game from Playground Games, published by Microsoft Studios for the Xbox 360. It is the fifth instalment of the Forza series and the first to leave the closed track behind for an open world. Players race and perform stunts during a fictional festival, building popularity as they go.
What is Forza Horizon?
Forza Horizon is an open-world racing game released on 23 October 2012 for the Xbox 360. It takes place during the fictional Horizon Festival, where the player works up the popularity rankings through races and stunts. It was the first Forza game set in an open world, and it went on to spawn five sequels.
The game grew out of the Forza Motorsport line, which Turn 10 Studios made. Its roads are temporarily closed public roads rather than a race track, so the racing feels informal and street-based. The developers wanted a more relaxed experience than other Forza games while keeping handling that felt realistic.
An open-world festival that traded race tracks for public roads and made popularity the real prize.
How does popularity work?
Popularity rises when drivers act aggressively, through drifts, jumps over obstacles and cars balanced on two wheels. Those actions can be chained into combos, and the combos raise the money paid at the end of a race. As popularity climbs, new showcases unlock, including races against helicopters and planes.
Speed traps are scattered around the map, and rivals can race one another for the fastest speed in a zone. Cameras record times, which can be shared with rivals who then try to beat them. A photography mode is included as well.
Head-to-head challenges start at the player's location and finish at a randomly generated waypoint, usually more than 500 metres away. Any racer met on the roads can be challenged in the same way, which keeps the open world busy.
Barn find cars, rare classics hidden around the map, can be restored and added to the garage. An auto show lets players buy and sell cars, the garage handles upgrades, and the paint shop creates custom paints, liveries and presets. Smashing discount signs while free roaming reduces the price of later upgrades.
Why was Colorado chosen as the setting?
Colorado was picked after the team researched almost 30 real-world locations. Creative director Ralph Fulton called it the clear winner, and the aim was to build the team's own take on the state. The landscape ranges from snowy peaks and open plains to foothills, with one area drawing on Red Rocks Park. Each zone had to connect smoothly to the next, which made the transitions a central design job.
The team travelled to the state to shoot footage and more than 50,000 still photos. The world began as a 2D layout before it evolved into several 3D areas. Moving between very different landscapes proved one of the biggest challenges, and flora and fauna were added for realism.
Who developed Forza Horizon?
Playground Games, a British studio, developed the game for Microsoft Studios. Its staff had previously worked on racing titles such as Project Gotham Racing, Driver, Colin McRae Rally and Burnout. Turn 10 creative director Dan Greenawalt backed the decision to hand the project to an outside team.
Playground first pitched a reboot of Project Gotham Racing, and that idea was reworked into Forza Horizon. Greenawalt compared the festival to real music events, namely Coachella, and wanted the game to feel more relaxed than other Forza titles while keeping realistic handling.
The series later outgrew its parent. By July 2025 the Forza Horizon series had overtaken the original Forza Motorsport series, after almost half of Turn 10's workforce was laid off and the American studio was reorganised to support Forza Horizon and the ForzaTech engine.
Vehicle reveals began on 23 August 2012 and showed off a 1969 Pontiac GTO Judge, with a 2012 Hennessey Venom GT and a Countach LP500 QV also shown. A season pass, confirmed on 25 September 2012, offered six car packs of six cars each, five exclusive cars and access to a rallying expansion slated for 18 December 2012. Rare unicorn cars were handed to players for community involvement.
The free 1000 Club arrived on 16 April 2013 with extra achievements and medals, and it included the Ruf CTR2 and the Ford F100. Each car in the game carried five or six achievements, and some of them unlocked Xbox achievements.
Key facts at a glance
| Item | Detail |
|---|---|
| Release | 23 October 2012 on Xbox 360 |
| Developer | Playground Games |
| Publisher | Microsoft Studios |
| Setting | Open world based on the U.S. state of Colorado |
| Ratings | PEGI 12; ESRB T |
| Famitsu | 36 out of 40 |
| Delisted | 20 October 2016, from the Xbox 360 Marketplace |
| Online servers closed | 22 August 2023 |
What was the soundtrack like?
The soundtrack features several dubstep tracks and three fictional radio stations: Horizon Bass Arena, Horizon Pulse and Horizon Rocks. Australian acts such as Cut Copy and Empire of the Sun appear alongside better-known producers. Horizon Pulse plays indie music, and Horizon Bass Arena focuses on electronic music; both returned in later sequels. Bestival founder Rob da Bank curated the songs.
Rob da Bank joined at the start as a creative consultant. He shaped the festival design and how the radio works in the car, as well as the music. A demonstration showed a variation of Avicii's Levels, remixed by Skrillex. Scott Tyler, who DJs on Horizon Bass Arena, has been in every game so far, up to Forza Horizon 6, and no other character matches that record.
How did critics respond?
Critics gave the game favourable reviews on Metacritic, and most scores were 80% approval or higher. Two reviewers gave perfect scores, while Polygon's Philip Kollar gave 60%. The game ranked in the top 20 Xbox LIVE titles for its first two months.
Eurogamer praised the open roads and realistic handling, while Polygon criticised the empty open world and an expensive DLC plan. Digital Spy and The Guardian each gave four stars out of five, and The Digital Fix gave nine out of ten. The Guardian singled out the popularity system for rewarding riskier decisions.
Eurogamer's deputy editor, Oli Welsh, said the game brought car enthusiasts together with the open roads they wanted. He noted that the handling let players enjoy even the slowest cars.
Famitsu gave the game a total of 36 out of 40. One Japanese reviewer said that public-road events marked a new direction for the series, while another found the controls more forgiving than earlier titles. The game was nominated for Racing Game of the Year at the 16th D.I.C.E. Awards.
What happened to the online service?
The game was removed from the Xbox 360 Marketplace on 20 October 2016 when its car branding licences expired. Its online servers, along with those for Forza Horizon 2, were shut down on 22 August 2023. Friends could still play together through a peer-to-peer workaround on Xbox Live.
In March 2018 an update for the Xbox One X raised the resolution to 4K on supported consoles. The game was briefly relisted on the Xbox Games Store on 30 April 2022 before being removed again, and its DLC was not returned.
