Steam Greenlight Spotlight: PolyRace

Today’s Greenlight spotlight (perfect fit for St. Paddy’s Day) shines on PolyRace, a 3-D racing game “with an infinite amount of tracks”, according to the developers. This game caught my eye because of its fast-paced racing gameplay, which brought me back to the days of F-Zero and Podracer, two of my favorite games of all time. I have always been an advocate for racing games, especially when they feature creative vehicles and allow you to customize and upgrade your kit. On top of the solid and enjoyable racing experience that PolyRace provides, which you can try for yourself in the demo located on their IndieDB page, I found the visual style of the game to be a great choice by the developers. The minimalist style is very important when it comes to fast-paced, twitch racing games because any distraction can potentially cost the player the race. Keeping the visual distractions to a minimum is a fantastic idea, but they also manage to make PolyRace look good in the process of doing so.

PolyRace begins each day by generating a randomized track for you to race on. You then are transported to your garage, where you can choose from one of four hovercraft classes. The Class-Echo Titan is the slowest ship, but has the largest amount of boost, which can be activated for a short time and with a fairly small cooldown period. The Titan can take the most damage from collisions with obstacles, which makes it the best choice for anyone just beginning to get into PolyRace. Class Kilo-T-Rex is an average ship. The T-Rex has the longest boost duration, but the boost is very expensive and must be used sparingly. Class Tango- Taalon has the highest base and turn speed, making it very efficient at taking turns. There is also the Class Whiskey, which has not been detailed at this time. Making your choice of ships determines which league that you will be racing in each day, and most likely will determine your competition, as the more skilled players will most likely gravitate towards the Taalon because of its faster speed. There are also credits in PolyRace, which you can use to upgrade the attributes of your chosen hovercraft. This is always a nice feature in racing games because it gives a sense of progression and keeps players returning in attempts to max out their ships. The first race of each day will take place in single player mode, and the following races will be against ghosts of other players in an attempt to beat their best times. Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem like there is active multiplayer, where you can actually race against your friends, but the game does feature a turn-by-turn multiplayer where you race each others’ ghosts and compete for the top time.

PolyRace does a very good job at providing an exciting and enjoyable racing experience. Swerving around obstacles at ungodly speeds while trying to focus on earning your place on the leaderboard are always fun in games, and this is no exception. With an interesting visual style, four classes to choose from, and solid gameplay, PolyRace definitely looks like its shaping up to be a fantastic addition to the racing genre. If you are interesting in taking a look at PolyRace, check them out on Greenlight, and consider leaving a vote and some constructive feedback. What are some other Greenlight titles that you guys and girls have your eyes on this week?