Kirby Air Riders: Global Test Ride, an online demo event where you can try out the Nintendo Switch 2 racing action game for free, took place over three time slots on November 8 and 9, with three more sessions to be held on November 15 and 16. While gamers were busy testing out their Air Ride machines during the first two days of the event, it was brought to light that the upcoming title has likely been developed in Bandai Namco Studio’s new in-house game engine.
Earlier this year, game director Masahiro Sakurai announced that Bandai Namco Studios took on the development of the title, much like with his previous work Super Smash Bros. Ultimate. But what’s interesting is that this time, the game seems to be using Bandai Namco Studios’ new in-house engine SOL-AVES. As pointed out by one of our readers, James McWhirter, the SOL-AVES engine logo can be found listed within the Intellectual Property Notices for the Kirby Air Riders demo.
Bandai Namco Studios filed the trademark for SOL-AVES in December 2022, which was registered in September 2024, and is currently looking to expand the development team for the engine. Looking at their recruitment page’s job listings, the engine (referred to as “our in-house engine”) is described using keywords such as “highest visual expression” and “deepening the gaming experience.”
We’ve previously reported that Bandai Namco Studios have been actively working on an “unnamed in-house engine” that would be capable of large-scale development, including open-world games. The project was initially announced in 2022, which seems to line up with the timing of SOL-AVES getting filed as a trademark. However, at the time of writing, we still cannot confirm whether the “unnamed in-house engine” announced in 2022 is the same one as SOL-AVES.
So far, there also isn’t any confirmation that recent titles other than Kirby Air Riders have been developed using SOL-AVES, but as Bandai Namco Studios website’ describes the engine as “the foundation to support development environments for all kinds of games,” it is very likely that more titles developed using the engine will start emerging in the near future.
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