Backed by industry leaders such as the co-creator of Gears of War, Cliff Bleszinski, and lead programmer of San Francisco Rush 2049, Aaron Hightower, Distance is a spiritual successor to indie racing game Nitronic Rush. Their intention is to take arcade racing to the next level, and instead of pursuing realism like the rest of the racing genre, the development team is aiming to make a fun game with new racing mechanics. Taking a cue from Limbo, Journey, and Half-life, Refract Studios intends to make a new racing game that utilizes its appearance to make a visually distinct and impressive atmosphere.
The game play brings in plenty of new elements to the racing scene, as well as resurrecting the most successful elements from Nitronic Rush. As a science fiction game, the developers have played around with physics and created race tracks full of short cuts, hazards, traps, and gravity distortions. Your vehicle will have multiple uses: driving quickly, flying, racing upside down, hovering, and rocketing forward are just some of the features available in the game. They also took Nitronic Rush’s biggest complaint—its lack of multiplayer—and fixed it. You can now expect to play against other racers in online multiplayer, and their name will mark their location on the track. You will be forced to find your own routes through each map in order to race through faster than your friends.
Presentation-wise, the game is beautiful. Refract Studios have clearly tried to emphasize their design: the cars are not realistic, but the beautiful tracks and lighting effects show that this arcade look was entirely intentional. The pixelated text on the roof of the car is a bit much to get the point across, but perhaps it will be used for some sleek game interfaces. The music composition shows that they also took great care in picking the genre and style of music that would accompany their game: the digital distortion matches perfectly with the different tracks shown in the preview, and the stages shown flow very well with the beat.
There are many different elements oddly absent from the commercial that seem like a must with multiplayer game play. Extensive vehicle customization would allow for true variation in competition—after all, when you’re of equal skill and racing with the same vehicles, multiplayer just falls down to luck. Even a little customization would liven up tracks. The different multiplayer game play modes and extensive level editor will probably compensate for this if they do end up leaving out vehicle customization.
It will be interesting to see how Refract Studios handles co-op racing, since it’s one of the most competitive genres and I can’t imagine two players being able to help each other out. With thirty-one days still left to go on their Kickstarter and $9,000 already raised towards their goal, the game certainly has a good start. With a unique mesh of platforming and racing, this game is definitely something different on the market and the best indie racing game being pitched on Kickstarter.
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