Game Reviews

SlotZ Racer

Star onStar onStar onStar onStar off
|
| SlotZ Racer
Get
SlotZ Racer
|
| SlotZ Racer

The Scalextric table-top racing phenomenon of the '80s was an odd one. You had to have the patience of a statue to play, and not just because you had to build your own tracks. You also needed Matrix-like time bending powers in order to pilot one of the skittish little racers round the track successfully.

Even the slightest boost in acceleration would see your miniature F1 car go skidding off the table and into a pile of oily rags in the corner of the garage. This prompted repeated, irksome retrievals of said racer, followed by the delicate process of placing it back on the track, aligning those copper brushes with the minute care of a master watchmaker.

In spite of all this, Scalextric was about as much fun as you could have with a few metres of black plastic and a lorry load of AA batteries.

SlotZ Racer wisely adopts this template, harnessing the fun side of the plastic track-racing toys of yore while leaving the punishing difficulty and frustrating stop-start, stop-start gameplay in the garage.

The aim is to adjust the speed of your car prudently to keep it from skidding off the track in an effort to outpace the competition. You do this using taps of the acceleration button situated in the bottom-right of the screen.

It may appear to be an over-simplified version of racing, but pitching your acceleration just right takes time and skill. Like the best racers, you really need to learn the tracks in order to keep the rubber on the tarmac.

By removing the need to steer, Freeverse has crafted a one-thumb game that plays to the strengths of the platform, while still presenting a rewarding challenge.

Similarly, given that one lap of the track takes about 10-15 seconds, even a race with five laps can be completed in around a minute. This means whole championships can be devoured in around ten minutes, which suits the sporadic bouts of play ideal on a pocket platform.

But the fun doesn’t end with the racing. SlotZ Racer also covers the other fundamental aspect of its subject material: building your own tracks. The track editor is a dream to use and the touchscreen really speeds up what can be an awkward process on other platforms.

Creating a course is as simple as touching the track piece you want to place and then hitting the plus sign in order to add multiples of that piece.

A small slider button allows you to adjust the length of the various chicanes, tunnels, banking curves and hairpins, opening up a near limitless well of possibilities. You can then race on your creations in Championship, Single Race, and Multiplayer modes.

Championship mode offers an array of competitions featuring different combinations of the 23 prepackaged tracks. You can also create your own competitions, selecting the tracks you want, including any of your own creations, as well as adjust the number or races and laps.

Multiplayer allows you and up to three other players to play on the same iPhone, with each player’s accelerator located in one of the four corners of the screen. The camera adopts a fixed position and you race to your heart's content, safe in the knowledge that you will never have to get up to replace any crashed cars.

SlotZ Racer’s visuals and presentation are crisp, clean and colourful. The layout is unfussy and there are no grainy textures on any of the game’s bold surfaces. Sadly the music is a tad limited and it would have been nice if a lap timer had been included in the hub.

Besides that, however, SlotZ Racer is a hard game to fault. Freeverse has taken the one thumb ethos that works so well on mobiles and merged it masterfully with the racing genre, resulting in a game that’s easy to pick up, yet presents an enduring challenge.

SlotZ Racer

SlotZ Racer brings the racing genre artfully into the one-thumb pen and is much more fun than something so simple has any right to be
Score