Forza Horizon 6 Playground Games

WHAT IS PLAYGROUND GAMES MODE
These are bite sized mini-games that can be started in the world of Forza Horizon 5. Infected, King, Capture The Flag. Despite having multiple start points across the map the general way of finding a match would be via the “online” tab then “Horizon Open” “Playground Games”

WHY PLAYGROUND GAMES MODE FADED AWAY
In my opinion the playground games mode never really unlocked it’s full potential from the lack of progression, customisation and the default maps were just randomly placed invisible wall borders around a few places of interest around the map. It was not updated, there were no new maps, no new game modes, nothing. Creating and finding custom PGG events was almost impossible without a guide and only really became possible when the EventLab 2.0 update came out with the pre-fab selection. The pre-fab selection allowed a prop to be placed in the arena which showcased where vehicle spawn points were.

LETS UPGRADE WHAT PLAYGROUND GAMES MODE COULD BE
Embrace the silly, The team shouldn’t shy away from outlandish ideas with PGGM.

  • Levelling System That Rewards
    You can see someone might be a level 50, but what does that mean? they played single player races for a few hours? They drifted around the map for a few hours gaining xp, They could’ve done anything really..
    Players like to be competitive in their favourite modes and they want something to show for it. They want that custom horn that say’s “You Can’t Catch Me HAHAHAHA” to taunt their rivals in King or Infected. They want a light up windscreen light strip that say’s “King Champion” Perhaps even some Forza Edition rims with #1 in the centre with spokes behind.

  • Dedicated Map Design
    Let’s make these maps exciting, a reason to play PGGM, custom built maps designed for the game modes that aren’t just areas on the map joe blogs can visit anytime in the forza world. Think back to silly fun games “Doritos Crash Course” “The Floor Is Lava”. Imagine loading up parts of the Takeshi’s Castle map to play Tag on. A map in space, Really go crazy with creativity to make these exciting and unique locations. Think Rocket League maps where the theming is everything.
    Make some of these maps outrageous, Let the team go wild, Tony Hawk style skatepark with big banked corners, jumps, rails to slide down, items to smash through.

  • Easy Accessibility To Find & Create
    The current menu setup requires quite a few clicks before you even get in to a game.
    Enter main world > Pause game > Scroll Across to Online > Select Horizon Open > Scroll Right To The End > Select Playground Games.

The current setup required to create a custom PGGM with no existing props at the arena.

  1. for creating
    you go to the blip - select eventlab itself - create blueprint - create route - save. (this is our finished map)
  2. for publishing
    you go to the blip - select game mode (other than eventlab itself) - create blueprint - create/choose route - find “Estadio Horizon Arena” route - publish - edit - pick finished map - publish
    (thanks to VacatedPizza303 for this guide)

It’s just a bit of a nightmare, searching for the events also people got really confused about share codes, typing a PGG share code didn’t work in super 7 or eventlab search, it had it’s own separate search which was only accessible from a pgg start point!!

Easy To Implement In FH6?
Forza Horizon 6 now supports placing a custom car grid, custom garage car spawn point, the ability to start building anywhere.. So surely all you’d have to do is add a new pre-set rule group in the new eventlab/super7 merge for “infected gameplay”

Who knows, Playground Games Championship could be something of interest, get a commentator, use the dev camera to fly around above the game while competitive gamers play infected.

“oh my god JingleJangleJoe has just JUMPED over DonJoeWonsong in this spectacular game of infected!, Did you just see that.. AR12 just had a major skill issue and has miss judged where the edge of the map is!!”

Thanks for your time today, Please share and add your suggestions in the comments below!

Original Interview Q&A PGG

T10 Pudding:
“So on a kind of a similar thing returning, or you know popular game modes, DarkMoon asked if Playground Games will be coming back into Japan in FH6, noting that it’s always been quite a fun game mode that they’ve enjoyed taking part in.”

Torben Ellert, Design Director of FH6:
“So Playground Games - that is King, Infected, Capture The Flag. They won’t be included at launch. Let me give you some context and thinking about that. I guess it boils down to the fact that we haven’t refreshed those modes in a while and would love to look at what we can do to make them feel more interesting and more exciting rather than just kind of hammering people towards them through Festival Playlist and artificially inflating the numbers that way but, I mean, I’d love to get input and insights for this from the Suggestions Hub, but some of the things that pop into my head are like: What if when you start it at a Stunt Party, instead of it being like a ‘Hey! Go do speedzones’ - 1 of the 12 players was picked as Infected and everyone else was given 5 seconds to run and a wall comes down and then it’s a game of Infected, just in the open world. Something like that maybe. But, as I said, right? If these are modes that you really enjoy, let us know things that could be better about them, because just bringing them back is a ‘by the numbers thing’ and I feel the modes could be more interesting. So, would love to get your insights about what we could do then.”

To me, I think infected and king modes are classics that need to return. I think the maps need to be better though. FH4’s maps kind of felt like an afterthought, and FH5 wasn’t much better. What made FH2’s maps so good, in my opinion, was that there were lots of usable verticality, jumps, and most importantly, tarmac arenas for road cars. Not having to slide everywhere and having faster acceleration made it more fun.

I like Team King and Team Flag Rush, but prefer solo infected. I think Team Infected never gives you the high of being last man standing, so I’d like to be able to play that again or more frequently. I prefer team flag rush as it feels much more like a traditional CTF mode, compared to the randomness of solo, and Team King is decent as it prevents one player from hogging the king the entire round, which can keep it interesting. A potential addition to this could be a neutral flag, where both teams have to fight over a single flag.

I would like to see improvement to spotting players, in FH5 I felt I was forced to squint my eyes at the minimap for half the time I was playing, so any way to make spotting easier without it being overpowered would be nice.

I think with the introduction of the stadium, car football and car hockey are something I believe a lot of players would enjoy, its a classic fun mode from FM4 and its return would be quite a lot of fun I hope.

Putting Playground Games in Stunt Party is probably the wrong call (The maps are what makes PGG fun, putting it in random spots would suck!!!). I believe Stunt Party should remain a Co-op focused mode, following in the footsteps of NFS Unbounds Link Ups or Burnout Paradise’s freeburn challenges. I think there needs to be more interesting objectives though as in FH5, things like smashing objects or hitting a speedtrap repeatedly arent really much of a skill requirement. I’m yet to play the refreshed stunt party in FH6 so I’ll come back with some feedback afterwards possibly.

I’d also like to suggest other minigames that like ‘Cat and Mouse’, Car Sumo, Demo Derby and possibly a Hot Pursuit mode. A big suite of minigames to choose from would really help relieve the feeling of repetition of these modes since FH3.

Make sure there is working eventlab integration for this mode, custom arenas have huge untapped potential.

There really needs to be a way of voting for modes in multiplayer, like back in FH2 and FH3. (This should be in multiplayer anyway!!!)

6 Likes

I’ve always found the PGG to be a great change of pace from regular gameplay, especially after the weekly challenges. It’s easily accessible for both casual players and ambitious players with very specific setups and knowledge of the arenas. King, Infected, and Flag are absolute classics that are just a must for me. I spent hundreds of hours playing them in FH3, and over time, we got to know each other. It was just a cool connection within the community when you saw familiar tags. I think the docks and the airfield, in particular, offer the perfect conditions to bring this element back—it just feels perfect right from the start. The Irokawa Space Center looks great for this, too; it would just be a shame not to have this classic anymore.

4 Likes

We had EventLab Island, how about PGG Island

3 Likes