A new racing game launched this month, which you’ve probably never heard of!
At RaceDepartment we love the idea of indie games, you may have seen that only last week we showcased the Buggy Game and this week we are looking at Race Condition which launched on the first of March and can be described as a low poly arcade racer.
The project was carried out by two friends and co-workers that bonded over the fact that they wanted to make a racing game. Both developers have always worked with interactive graphics and physics. They developed an outer space visualization software, which was used in planetariums around the world.
There’s a demo of the game, which will be available for the foreseeable future and can be found here
Overview
Set in a modern low-poly arcade world, players of Race Condition find themselves as a rookie in a highly competitive open-wheel racing league. A rivalry with the suspiciously good opponent Mr. Dickmann takes them on a tour across the world which unfolds a series of intense races with their fair share of crashes, pit-stops and strategic decisions.Taking its low-poly looks and simple controls from the arcade hits of the past, Race Condition adds in realistic car behavior to end up with an arcade racer that looks deceptively simple, but provide a real racing challenge throughout the simple David and Goliath story.
Our thoughts on the demo
The polygon stylisation harks back to games of the 90s and immediately reminded us of Virtuaracing - except that Race Condition is way better on the eyes.What initially strikes you with the game is how clean the menus and sub menus are, and the music is a fantastic mix of 90s arcade style mixed in with something not too unfamiliar for Formula One.
Race Condition can be played with keyboard and controller, and instantly recognised the Xbox controller we plugged into the PC.
In the demo, we tried a quick race. Players are offered cars with different liveries and one track is available. The clean lines from the first menu continue throughout the experience, and everything feels polished and well built.
Once a car has been selected, players are offered three skill levels - training, balanced, and pro. Essentially, the cars are the same, but the downforce differs depending on your choice.
Once in the race, that 90s nostalgic feel comes flooding, but then you notice the lighting effects from the low sun. Even with poly graphics, Race Condition looks very nice indeed!
Players start at the back of the grid in this demo and they are given three laps to make their way through the pack. It took us a few attempts to get used to the handling, but once we found how to drive these cars, Race Condition was extremely good fun! There is some physics going on, but do not expect simulation level stuff here. Wheels and friction are modeled, along with chassis drag; cars get lighter during a race as fuel burns off.
There are a number of different tracks to choose from in the actual game, some of which have taken inspiration from real-world tracks. Players can also be joined by three of their friends and play 4 player split screen.
During testing, we lost count of the amount of times we played the demo, it’s extremely fun, there’s something about it that makes you want to give it another go. As a casual arcade racer, Race Condition is a very fun game indeed.
Development
Work began on Race Condition two years ago, initially utilizing the Godot game engine, but as development got more serious the decision was made to switch to Unity. One of the main reasons for the switch was that the Unity engine has a greater number of platforms that are supported. This means that the potential to port to other devices in the future would be easier.Future Plans
Currently 4 players are able to utilize split screen, and there’s not plan to allow players to play against each other online. However they are open to it, if this is what players want - however to get to this stage they first need to build a fan base.Race condition is available on Steam, but there has been discussions to release the game on other devices. The guys have even developed the game with porting to other devices in mind, so they feel confident that porting is doable.
What devices would you like to see Race Condition on?
There’s a long list of features that did not make it into the game and the developers will be taking a further look at this list for potential future updates and add-ons. They also listen closely to what their players want and will most likely work on improvements that their players are most interested in.
Race Condition is available to buy now through Steam.
