Don’t Wreck the Car. Take It Apart.
TORONTO, ON — September 1, 2026. They took his wife. They have his daughter. The machines that inherited America are not trying to kill anyone, which is the worst part. Mad Metal is a dark vehicle combat shooter about one man, one car and a very short list of options, and it launches on Steam on Monday, September 21. It was built solo by founder Hakim Elayday at Mad Mechs Inc. and published by indie.io, and it has a free demo live on Steam.
Nearly every vehicle combat game treats a car as a health bar on wheels. Mad Metal treats it as a collection of parts, each destructible on its own, and that single decision changes what a fight is. Time slows, and the shot becomes surgical. Puncture a fuel tank and let the explosion finish the job. Break a door open and the driver is suddenly the target. Rip a wheel off and something that was hunting you a second ago slides to a stop. Mad Mechs calls it Dead Aim, and it is why ramming gets you nowhere here. A chase stops being a collision and becomes a decision about what to take away first. When it goes badly, you can settle it from the cabin, watching heat and ammo on the dash in first person and drawing a sidearm once the primary weapon quits.
Set in the 2080s, after AI corporations built machines that started making decisions no human authorized, the world of Mad Metal runs on abduction rather than slaughter. People are converted into a half-human, half-machine race built to inherit whatever is left. Jack is one of the few who hasn’t been taken, and the car is the only advantage he has.
What he drives is up to the player. Every part carries a cost in weight and aerodynamics, so a build is a set of trade-offs rather than a shopping list. Nine base vehicles and more than eighty attachments feed a full Create Your Own Car builder, and each attachment changes how the vehicle sounds and handles. Augments picked up mid-run push a build somewhere unplanned. Sonar tracks enemies through walls, caltrops stop a pursuer and a jetpack buys the high ground, while boss encounters exist to find the gap in whatever you brought.
Players will discover that there is more than one way to survive, with multiple game modes. Play through eight narrated campaign missions that put your driving and combat skills to the ultimate test as you race to save your daughter. Extraction sends two of you against escalating waves that end in a boss fight and an airlift out, assuming you make the zone. Deathmatch is simpler and meaner, a 1v1 fight to the death. And in open-world invasion, you drop into someone else’s world, where the interesting part is that you choose whether to arrive as friend or foe. Match with players of similar skill for casual or competitive play in ranked and unranked MMR.
The soundtrack reacts to the state of the car, shifting as the vehicle takes damage. It was produced with Scarlet Moon’s Jayson Napolitano and features singer/songwriter Stefani Keogh alongside musicians Frank van ‘t Ende and Idem Grey.
The demo is live on Steam now with multiplayer included, and MMR earned in the demo carries into the full game. Mad Metal launches on Steam on September 21, 2026.
ABOUT MAD MECHS INC.
Headquartered in Canada, Mad Mechs is an indie game development studio with a passion for reimagining and modernizing old-school action games. The core team works with professionals from around the globe to help bring their creative visions to life. Their debut title, Mad Metal, is currently in development.
ABOUT INDIE.IO indie.io is a games publisher dedicated to bringing exceptional independent games to players worldwide. With a portfolio spanning a wide range of genres, indie.io partners with developers to provide the support, resources, and expertise needed to bring creative visions to life. Developers self-publishing their own games can also use the indie.io Tools Storefront, with marketing and development tools. For more information, visit indie.io.
