One of the most interesting features in Forza Horizon 5 is one that was revealed right back at the game’s first announcement, but barely spoken of since: Event Lab. In fact it’s been kept so quiet that it wasn’t even mentioned in the guide Microsoft sent along with our review code last week, and we really wish it had.
Nonetheless, Playground Games has released a video today detailing the Event Lab itself as well as some of the weird and wonderful possibilities that it opens up.
Put simply, Event Lab allows you to create your own events within Forza Horizon 5. At its most basic, it replaces “Blueprints” from Forza Horizon 4, which is in essence a way of redefining the races Playground Games has set up in the game world, with control over which vehicles may enter, and weather and light conditions. That only scratches the surface though.
Within Event Lab, players can also create their own driving routes. The only limitation is that you must start from an existing “race activation point” — anywhere in the FH5 world where you can start a race of any type — but from that point on you can drive where you like, setting checkpoints down as you go. You can create a circuit event, or a point-to-point race to end wherever you choose.
Using the “Blueprint Builder” adds an extra dimension previously only seen in Horizon 4’s Super7 mode. It brings up the option to use hundreds of objects in your event, with some available in different colors (though obviously you should only choose purple) and some breakable items too.
This means you can set up and create completely new events, with jumps, obstacles, and decorative items scattered through your route to make it more challenging or more fun, and they aren’t limited to the cards of the Super7 mode.
Even that though isn’t the limit of Event Lab, which quite literally allows you to change the rules of the game.
There’s a dedicated menu within the Event Lab mode that gives you fine control over your race’s rule set. You can, for example, simply make it so that each time a player passes a checkpoint, the regular beep sound is replaced with a different noise.
However, you can also make it more complex than that. The video shows a race which dispenses with regular timing altogether and awards the win to whichever player smashed the most of a certain kind of object. It also flashes up different on-screen messages than you’d usually see (please keep it clean if you’re tinkering with this!).
A further sequence has the player car hunting for treasure chests — straight from FH4’s Fortune Island expansion — in order to upgrade their car. The game’s rules limit engine torque so the car cannot reach the elevated finish line until they’ve found all three chests.
One final race involves a whole range of different rules in play, requiring the player to smash through targets in order to destroy giant faces that taunt you throughout with Monty Python quotes.
There’s a range of Event Lab creations from Playground staff available in the game now, and the team will be keeping an eye out for, and selecting, the very best public creations to be highlighted both in the game and on future streams.
