For the past few weeks, I’ve been playing Star Wars: Galactic Racer pretty much nonstop. The arcade racing game, spearheaded by former Burnout developers, makes great use of the Star Wars universe to create a thrilling game filled with high stakes and even higher speeds. It’s not exactly breaking new ground in terms of its racing, mind you, but there is something innovative hidden beneath its spectacular crashes: its roguelite single-player campaign, a modern twist that nevertheless feels rooted in arcade history.
At a distance, that sales pitch might sound a little odd. When I first played Galactic Racer this summer and described how it worked to other members of the press, I was met with some knee-jerk revulsion at the idea. But not only does the idea work better than you might expect, it’s also a sensible match for the traditional structure of the genre.
In Galactic Racer’s single-player campaign, you take on the role of Shade, a rookie racer who gets entered into an unsanctioned — and definitely unsafe — racing league. Your goal is to make your way through the ranks of the Galactic League and take down your rival, Kestar. To do that, you need to win (or at least survive) several races in a row to get a shot at the grand prize.
All things considered, that’s a pretty basic racing game setup. What’s unusual, though, is that it’s all laid out as a roguelite. By spending a token, you’re dropped into a new run.
You can choose what events you want to tackle on a branching event map, not unlike Slay the Spire, and get upgrades with each victory. You’re creating a build as you go, fine-tuning your car’s stats and experimenting with synergistic upgrades. There’s a touch of meta progression on top of that, as you can earn a currency in races that allows you to give your cars permanent stat boosts.
Otherwise, you start from the bottom of the league every time you lose. It’s a brilliant idea for a genre that frankly hasn’t had a creative shake-up in generations. As fresh as that idea is, what I actually love about it is how classical it secretly is.
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