On your marks, get set, go, go, go!
Game designers rarely go off-road when creating racing games and eschew lesser-traveled paths in favor of more established, familiar routes. Not Gordon Midwood, though; the one lone developer at indie studio Different Cloth is working on a racer that’s unlike anything we’ve seen before.
Drive!Drive!Drive! puts players behind the wheel of multiple cars at the same time, tasking players to compete across several tracks at once. If that sounds chaotic, well, that’s probably because it is.
It’s controlled chaos, though. Luckily, you need only take control of one vehicle at a time. However, in what might be one of the better “it’s a feature” excuses yet, the computer in this game is as dumb as a post.AI-controlled cars (both yours and your opponents’) are largely incompetent.
This requires players to hop from one track to the next, either taking the lead or putting the computer in a position to do so before moving on to the next track. The challenge is more about management and strategy, rather than pure driving skill. And given there can be up to six tracks on any raceway, all of which sport differing speeds, steering your team to victory can be quite a handful.
WhileDrive!Drive!Drive!is still somewhat early in development, it can be a pretty rough ride. During my time in the driver’s seat last week in Seattle, I discovered the title doesn’t handle anywhere near as well as, well, any mainstream racers I’ve had the pleasure of playing in recent years.
Midwood was the first to admit the experience could use some fine tuning, as sharp turns often resulted in messy pile-ups and ramps can send your vehicle flying onto another track with no means of returning to the correct one. But there’s still time to fix mechanical issues and tighten up the controls, especially since the concept and aesthetics are already so attractive.
The visuals are minimalist, but the pastel color palette and otherworldly track layouts more than make up for some technically unimpressive graphics. The trippy vibe is also enhanced by a trippy soundtrack, courtesy of synth artist Zombi, giving the game a distinctive look and feel.
On top of that, there’s a track creator, which should give the experience some legs, allowing players to build and share their own designs with the community, should one ever form around the game.
Drive!Drive!Drive!is targeting a 2016 launch on PlayStation 4, Vita, PC, and maybe more systems.