Mad Metal Lets You Shoot Individual Parts Off Cars, Out September 21
Mad Metal , a dark vehicle combat shooter built around destroying individual car parts rather than draining a health bar, launches on Steam September 21.
The game was built solo by founder Hakim Elayday at Mad Mechs Inc. and is published by indie.io, with a free demo already live on Steam ahead of the full release.
Every Fight Is a Question of What to Take Away First
Where most vehicle combat games treat a car as a single health pool, Mad Metal treats it as a collection of destructible parts. A system the developers call Dead Aim lets players slow time and target components with precision, puncturing a fuel tank to trigger an explosion, breaking a door open to expose the driver directly, or ripping off a wheel to stop a pursuer cold.
Ramming offers little value here, since a chase becomes less about collision and more about deciding what to disable first. When a vehicle fight goes badly, players can fall back to first-person cabin combat, watching heat and ammo on the dash and drawing a sidearm once the primary weapon runs dry.
The game is set in the 2080s, after AI corporations built machines that began making unauthorized decisions of their own. Rather than killing outright, the resulting world runs on abduction, converting people into a half-human, half-machine race meant to inherit whatever's left. Players control Jack, one of the few who hasn't been taken, with his car serving as his only real advantage against the machines hunting him.
A Deep Build System Across Multiple Modes
Vehicle customization carries real trade-offs, with every part affecting weight and aerodynamics rather than functioning as a simple upgrade.
Nine base vehicles and more than 80 attachments feed into a full Create Your Own Car builder, and mid-run augments like sonar that tracks enemies through walls, caltrops for stopping pursuers, or a jetpack for reaching higher ground can push a build in unplanned directions.
Players can work through eight narrated campaign missions built around Jack's effort to save his daughter, team up for Extraction runs against escalating waves capped by a boss fight, settle things directly in 1v1 Deathmatch, or drop into another player's world in open-world invasion mode, choosing to arrive as either friend or foe.
The soundtrack, produced with Scarlet Moon's Jayson Napolitano and featuring singer/songwriter Stefani Keogh, reacts dynamically to the state of the vehicle as it takes damage.
The demo currently live on Steam includes multiplayer, and MMR earned there carries over into the full game when it launches September 21.
This story was originally published by GameDaily on Sep 5, 2026, where it first appeared in the Games section. Add GameDaily as a Preferred Source by clicking here.
