Racing Apex, the upcoming arcade racer from Lucky Mountain Games, is looking to use destructibility and a minimalist polygonal style to breath new life into the genre.
Daytona USA, Virtua Racing, Burnout, Midnight Club, Split Second and Ridge Racer were among the nigh-endless list of non-simulation racing games mentioned by Lucky Mountain Games’ director Trevor Lay while he introduced me to Racing Apex, the arcade racer the team have been rattling around in their heads for the last half a decade.
While the game wears those early Sega racing games as obvious influences, it’s the veteran team’s experiences —they count among them time at Rockstar, EA, Critereon, and Black Rock Studios— which promises to rebirth the genre; by slathering modern conventions and features all over their love-letter to the ailing genre.
Starting Grid
The idea, as Trevor explained, was to build an accessible racing title which allowed for short plays, competitive play, and heavy customisation. On top of that he wanted to build a game which was perfectly suited for multiplayer, both online and local. The killer secret, however, would be destructibility.
Each of the game’s 32 cars —four for each of the eight launch characters— can be shattered down to the frame, various parts of bodywork or functioning parts can be torn loose from the vehicle if they suffer too many collisions, shots, or impacts. Catch a burst of rifle fire as you drift around a corner and you might lose a door, mess up a drift, smashing into the wall and you might leave large parts of your car behind. This ties in perfectly to Racing Apex’s deep vehicle customisation as well, which allows for chassis conversions as well as over a dozen upgradeable points on the vehicles.
This deep customisation is one of the reasons the developer was confident people would want to return to the game, the chance to completely finesse a style, and then totally wreck the delicate designs of your rivals.
Victory Lap
The game’s pitch on Steam Greenlight last year was heavily focused on the more violent play-styles, with the cars slipping and sliding around the track, sending brief rallies of machine-gun fire hurtling across the track, and that’s definitely a part of the game.
What I got to experience though, was an arcade race around a city map populated with tight corners, low tunnel roofs, and densely packed city blocks. I didn’t get much time to look around the map as I was too busy trying to figure out the game’s drifting which functions very much like Ridge Racer, wherein you have to drift corners in order to maintain speed. The developer, understandably, did a much better job of manoeuvring the vehicle, and showed me a couple of different tracks from the selection of 16 which will launch with the game.
Weapons were not implemented for the build at the show, so I didn’t get to see the game’s damage effects in play, although they’re said to be close to implementation. Also absent at the time were the game’s pick-ups, which was a crying shame.
Gatling guns, sentry guns, smoke, boosts, oil slicks, and more are set to be in the final game. It’s a veritable spy-toolkit, and early trailers have shown that they completely change the pace of the game when they’re active on the track.
Weapons in the associated modes are collected like pick-ups from points around the map, with players able to see and chose which pick-up they’d like — oil slicks to shake people off when they’re in the lead, or rockets to bring people down if they’re trailing.
Finish Line
Racing Apex is planned to launch with eight different modes ranging from classic Time Trials, Eliminator, and Arcade, through to a capture the flag mode which sees you trying to move a flag from a speeding flatbed truck, a bomb-tag mode where you pass an explosive via shunting, and a competitive multiplayer where players can opt to instead play as a vehicle’s gunner. It’s a solid offering for certain.
Most of these modes will also tie into localised leaderboards, each charting lap times across each of the game’s maps all the way down to a city level.
Alongside the game’s weaponised combat and decent mode variety the developer also confirmed that, should the game doe well, they have more than enough ideas for ways to keeping the game live and relevant; realworld locations as maps, additional racers, and more.
Racing Apex is currently expected to release in early 2018. The game is in development for PC as well as Xbox One, PS4 & Switch.
