Ceci est une ancienne révision du document !
Website: https://slipstre.am/
Price: $ 5 - 9 USD
Blurb: “It's 199X, you're in the driver seat. As you turn the key and hear the engine starting, a cassette plays on the stereo. The clear blue sky invites you to escape, to explore a world of exotic landscapes and thrilling races. Step on the gas, choose your path, drive across cities, mountains, deserts, forests, beaches — places from all over the world and beyond.”
Starting this game, I immediately started pining for people I didn’t know. The little music loop was fun, the background trippy in a pixelated way.
The game supports single and multiplayer games and has a slew of game types and modes, like one would come to expect from any racer / traffic dodger. Just like old coin-ops, your car has 3 basic ‘stats’, acceleration, top speed, and handling, making it easy to pick up and play.
If I were to use the words: “Out Run” and “Lotus Esprit”, and you immediately grasped those – you are in for a treat. Truth be told, I never liked Out Run or any of its clones, but somehow I like this (as a distraction, but I like it nonetheless). Before I go any further, I want to make a turn past a pet peeve of mine. “Retro” styled games… Pixel art is an ART. Everyone is familiar with Metal Slug, and if you are not, what stone have you been living under? The pixel art is gorgeous, even at low resolution. Making a game look like my old basic games I made at 7 years old, then trying to pass it off as “Retro” because you could not be bothered to put effort into the pixel art, really irks me. Just browse Steam for ‘pixelated indie games’ and it is 50% vomit. But back to this game. I am not claiming the pixel art is gorgeous or anything, but it fits in with what a retro game of the 80’s and 90’s may have looked like as an Out Run clone. As this game is touted as paying homage to Out Run, I will measure it against that.
Firstly, there are things that *could have been left out, but were added in for “authenticity,” like the Japanese characters below the name or the over use of gradients. One thing I did notice, was that even though it has a lot of those same trees whizzing by, the developer (yes it has only one developer!) used his assets wisely. When you drive in the city, instead of seeing the same 1-2 buildings whiz by, they have been stacked and overlaid to give the illusion that there are a lot more sprites.
Let’s face it, if you considered Slipstream, you didn’t do it for the graphics, though they do not fall in the ‘bad’ category. You came for the music and the fast paced gaming action! If you want to listen to the composer, ‘fork’ - look up ‘effoharkay’ on Soundcloud and Bandcamp. The music is very ‘Synth Wave’-like, and the songs are short enough so they don’t tire your ears out. Somehow the loopy music seems to have been written especially for each level as it fits it like a glove. Okay, it may just be me, I like music without words, which is probably why I cannot stand rap. That said, though the music is a bit sound-chippy, it is not made by a SID chip or YM / AY chip. Where Out Run had music that sounded like it was blasted from an ad-lib sound card, this is full and vibrant sounding. I am not bad-mouthing Out Run here, I understand the constraints, I am just trying to convey the difference.
What is truly impressive is the speed the game runs at. Even on my potato laptop, the animation is smooth, I would venture sixty frames per second smooth. My one complaint is here too, as a traffic-dodger, there is far too little variety in NPC vehicles. I wanted to see trucks and bikes and the like on the road. The slack is taken up by the NPC racers, who will taunt you or comment randomly, adding a bit of a story element.
I sort of wish the game was a homage to Chase HQ also, giving me a bit more to do than keep my car on the road. I don’t think I will spend more than 2 – 3 hours playing the game, total per year, but it is a fun distraction that I like, as I can switch off playing it.
The controls are actually very responsive and you don’t feel like you are driving a school bus instead of a racer. Here’s looking at you: Out Run port! This makes the game feel modern, even though the aesthetic is retro.
Since the game is, like, a fiver, I have to point out that it has a competitor, with a lot more elements: “198X”. Then again, as they are so cheap, why not get both and get your retro arcade on!
Bonus fun fact from Ronnie: I backed this on Kickstarter way back in 2016. Unfortunately, it looks like Kickstarter has taken that page offline, but there were over 440 backers. By 2017 it was in a Humble Bundle (also expired now). Steam keys were issued in early 2018 and by mid-2018 it was also on itch.io. The dev’s page is at: https://www.ansdor.com/