[5] The player races a vehicle against several other computer-controlled competitors in various settings, including city, mine and industrial areas.

Initially, SCi wanted to use the Mad Max license, but was unable to find out who owned the rights to the franchise.

[7] According to head programmer Patrick Buckland, the initial concept stemmed from team members getting bored while playing racing games, leading them to ultimately drive in the wrong direction and crash into other cars.

[8] Rob Henderson from SCi suggested increasing the potential for controversy by awarding the player points for the pedestrian kills.

[7] The name Carmageddon was coined, and development proceeded with the designers allowed unusually free rein with regard to the content of the game.

[14] In addition, a port of the game for Apple's mobile devices (iPod Touch, iPhone, iPad) was released on October 17 the same year.

[citation needed] In many countries (including Germany and, for a short time, the United Kingdom), the first release of the game was censored.

The censored version contained zombies with green blood or robots with black oil instead of humans, as running over the non-human figures was considered more acceptable by their respective ratings boards.

[34] GameSpot was enamoured of the open ended, chaotic nature of the game, commenting that "Carmageddon touches that particular collective nerve that fuses the wholesome popularity of the All-American Racing Game with the homicidal singularity of the 70s cult film into an onscreen experience that can only be compared to the kind of automotive mayhem that a five-year-old American male wreaks with his Matchbox and Hot Wheels cars.

"[26] Next Generation stated that "if you're willing to sweep your morals under the rug for a while, and shamelessly commit auto homicide on a grand scale, then Carmageddon is an absolute blast.

"[31] GamePro gave a more mixed review, commenting that the game is intense and high on longevity, but that its focus on wanton destruction and gore is in questionable taste and ultimately to the detriment of the gameplay.

In August 2005 SCi (at the time operating under the name Eidos) put development at Visual Science on hold for unspecified reasons.

[36] SCi and Eidos went on to focus on other projects, while Square Enix Europe obtained the series's intellectual property rights.