Never been a lot for motorsports normally, however you stick a super-charged engine and a few method of swish sci-fi gimmickry on a racing automotive, and I’m in. As such, it’s no nice shock that I’m wanting to get my grubby mitts on Trailblazers from Guildford based mostly outfit Supergonk, a novel team-based hovercar racer that brings just a few intelligent concepts to the desk, even when they’re retrofits from different video games and genres, and it’s due out in per week.
The factor that strikes me most instantly about Trailblazers is the retro-futuristic fashion. Halfway between The Jetsons and Futurama, it’s a foolish sci-fi world of massive chunky hover-muscle-cars, goldfish bowl space-helmets and ray-guns. It’s good to have a look at proper off the bat, and the environments are lushly colored. But what actually units the sport aside from the pack is the massive twist to the gameplay: Painting the observe to your workforce.
‘Painting’ isn’t actually the phrase for it, if you wish to be choosy. The observe itself is a beautiful trying LCD panel array, made up of 1000’s of distinct little cells, however whoever is within the lead to your workforce (it’s a 3v3 sport at coronary heart) can change the color of the panels beneath as they drive, as long as they’ve sufficient power left of their tank. Any teammates that drive over your workforce’s color will discover themselves gaining a velocity increase that will increase the longer you keep an unbroken combo driving your individual hue.
Immediately, strategic performs spring to thoughts. Do you are taking a barely slower racing line to create an unbroken string of paint whereas making an attempt to interrupt up the opponent’s markings? It appears extra structured and understandable than the likes of most kart-style racers or the Wipeout sequence, but in addition might result in some very thrilling performs. If there’s something taking part in Splatoon has taught me, it’s that every thing can change in a second when groups swap gears and check out a brand new strategy to portray.
The solely actual worries I’ve about Trailblazers is that the standard of the single-player will hinge closely on how properly the AI feels to work with as a workforce, and will show irritating if there’s not some approach to a minimum of give your racers orders. Also, that multiplayer may not obtain the essential mass of gamers it wants to actually catch on. That mentioned, I’d very very similar to to be unsuitable on each counts, as there’s clearly quite a lot of potential right here, an aesthetic that I very a lot dig, and a contemporary tackle a gameplay mechanic that not too many have experimented with thus far.
Trailblazers is due out subsequent week on May eighth. You can wishlist it on Steam here, and take a look at the official site here.
