In 2013, the car driving simulator had a soft release with some Alpha testing, followed by an Early Access launch in 2015, that contained additional features for a new platform. The cars’ internal design resembled ‘beams,’ which the team derived the name from, followed by ‘NG’ for New Generation. The latter was better equipped to handle the soft-body physics that was unique to the current project.
While they started working on the game with CryEngine 3, it eventually moved over to Torque.
They were looking to build a new drive physics engine that could handle collisions. Development of BeamNG.drive began in 2011 when some Rigs of Rods developers moved onto a new project.