Fiebru: Production & Development Breakdown
The purpose of Fiebru is to challenge the lack of authentic regional representation in the racing genre. While Puerto Rico is rarely featured in mainstream gaming—and almost never with geographical or cultural accuracy, this independent MFA thesis project proves that distinct regional identities can be celebrated through a stylized visual direction without losing their real-world essence.
This video above showcases the complete gameplay flow of Fiebru, tracking a full lap around the circuit. The core design challenge was balancing the tight, historic colonial street layouts of Old San Juan with a fast-paced racing experience. By utilizing distinct visual sightlines, custom track boundaries, and stylized environmental assets, the project establishes an immersive, culturally rich atmosphere right from the starting line.
A major component of grounding the game in authentic local street-racing culture was giving users direct control over their vehicle's look and performance. Using the DriftMaster physics system as a foundation, I designed an interactive customization menu that lets players fine-tune driving values like acceleration, top speed, and suspension.
To handle the visual modifications efficiently as a solo developer, I built a semi-modular vehicle kit using stylized Toyota Corolla-inspired models, allowing players to swap out body components. The cosmetic painting system utilizes custom RGBA texture masks in Unreal Engine 5, enabling users to isolate and change colors across specific body panels, rims, and hood styles dynamically without needing unique texture sets for every combination.
To build an entertaining and immersive single-player experience, I utilized DriftMaster's AI system to drive the non-player vehicles along a single spline tracking the entire track. My focus was expanding this foundation into a lived-in race environment by implementing a personalization system; every AI opponent spawned receives a randomized cosmetic style alongside a driver identity selected from a pool of common Puerto Rican names.
This video above highlights how those systems interface with the custom race UI I designed. The onscreen displays actively track real-time leaderboard positions, completed laps, and live timing gaps, ensuring players can easily read the state of the race as they aggressively compete against the AI through the tight corridors of the track.
This gallery highlights the architectural translation of some of Old San Juan's most iconic locations into a game environment. Using meticulous real-world mapping and photographic analysis, the circuit remains highly accurate to the city's actual layout and elevation changes. By leaning into an expressive, stylized art direction rather than pure photorealism, I was able to build an optimized asset pipeline across Autodesk Maya, Blender, and Houdini while preserving the unmistakable identity of the vibrant, colorful architecture.
Conclusion & Full Documentation
Fiebru demonstrates that game developers do not have to compromise on fun gameplay or stylized artistic choices to deliver genuine cultural representation. By successfully translating the unmistakable architecture and elevation changes of Old San Juan into an interactive space, the project serves as a proven concept for authentic Puerto Rican representation in the gaming industry. The positive feedback and high accuracy testing scores from users confirmed that players can feel a strong, recognizable sense of place within a stylized world, showing that indie developers can actively celebrate unique regional identities while still maintaining pure entertainment value.
For those interested in reading the full research paper, survey data, and technical implementation breakdown, you can download the complete thesis document here: Full Paper on Google Drive