Where Micro Machines was a scrappy arcade rally title, Obstacle Overdrive is arguably the MudRunner of the toy driving games.
Obstacle Overdrive is all about one word, GRIP. Well, it’s also about toys, specifically when you’d get all of your toys and try and create a racetrack around your room, often starting with Micro Machines style ‘flat tracks’ but likely evolving into big, off-road piles of plastic and wood that doesn’t quite line-up up, but is still worth the impressive title of ‘Mt Awesome’… or whatever you thought to call it.
That’s because it’s as much about balance as it is about angle and approach. If you run up against a complex staircase of bricks, or a spiralling descent along rubbery-rope, then you’d better be hitting it from the correct angle so that you can actually retain control as your wheels start to grip the new surfaces. Everything is textured, the hit boxes are succinct, and your revs have to be precise.
It’s lucky, then, that it isn’t a competitive racing title. Instead, it’s about exploring these tracks, either to a time limit or simply to pick up collectibles.
I played through a couple of levels of Obstacle Overdrive while at GDC earlier this year, where they even had a real-world version of it set up nearby (I was as poor at that as I was my first run at the digital version), however I found myself sucked in after a level or two, really enjoying the nostalgia and goofiness of the levels.
Obstacle Overdrive is in development for PC, it doesn’t currently have a release date but can be wishlisted on Steam.
