… %!s(
How many times have you bought a cheap banger, entered it in a series of races called something like the ‘Rookies Cup’, and used the proceeds to unlock new events? Since Gran Turismo arrived in 1997 and pioneered that vehicular rags-to-riches structure, it feels like we’ve repeated that identical racing game campaign mode grind countless times.
In fact, when you pause and look back at the great and good of racing games, it seems like all of them, from Need For Speed to Dirt Rally, were about putting you at the bottom of a big pile of events and having you gradually climb your way up to the faster races in the best cars. The genre’s been laser-focussed on innovating when it comes to visuals, physics models, tire simulation and the like, but it’s been stuck on the same solo gameplay structure for way too long.
Star Wars: Galactic Racer flies its speeders against the grain in many ways. More than just a game that gets both the cinematic IP and the feeling of racing right, it’s an experience that seems to be visiting from a parallel universe. One where the familiar hand-holding game design philosophy didn’t take root, and the Gran Turismo career mode didn’t become ubiquitous.
“Why hasn’t someone thought about that before?” Fuse Games co-founder and CEO, Matt Webster, reflected on the game’s unique run-based career mode when IGN spoke to him back in May. It’s so obvious that it would make for a fantastic racer when you see it implemented like this: instead of working through a to-do list of championships, you pick from a selection of different sequences of events, each with their own risks and rewards, and if you lose too many times along the way you’re booted out of the whole championship. It’s back to the start for you, and no excuses. Even before you get familiar with the nuances of the mode, there’s something about knowing losing actually matters that feels refreshing.
“Gaming is risk-reward”, says Webster, “but the risk has to have a consequence.” In Webster’s previous racing hits like Burnout, that consequence looked like a spectacular wreck, your car resetting on the track, and you having some catching up to do.
“But we've lost consequence because, in many racing games, we don't really spend the time on crashing,” he adds. “It’s been eroded away. So [we] looked at different genres that you could steal from, because genres have done that in contemporary gaming. We see lots of hybrid mechanics going in, and actually racing is a bit of an outlier that hasn't done that.”
We've lost consequence because, in many racing games, we don't really spend the time on crashing.“
Instead, racing has gone in one of two directions recently. The post-covid sim racing boom seemed to convince developers of the more hardcore titles that the PvP-focused iRacing model is king. Why spend such a lot of effort on a career mode built around PvE racing when your player base is queuing up in lobbies, waiting to provide more intelligent and unpredictable competition than even the smartest AI drivers? The success of Assetto Corsa Competizione and Le Mans Ultimate has only strengthened that argument.
At the other end of the spectrum lies the Forza Horizon model. Friendly, malleable, and totally player-directed, its structure is basically failure-proof. Forza Horizon 6 set a new standard for open-world racing in 2026, capturing the crystallised essence of Japanese car culture and giving you many ways to explore them. But does losing a race really carry much weight at the Horizon festival?
Like an encouraging parent, Horizon treats everything you do as a victory. Oh, you drove through another mascot, great job! it cooes. Wow, and that’s 25% of all the roads explored now – someone deserves a cheeky wheelspin. So when you do actually take on something difficult and prevail, the payoff is dulled not because the game doesn’t recognise it, but because it treats you like its favourite special little driver, no matter whether you win or lose.
So yes, it feels like an oddly radical move that Star Wars: Galactic Racer implements a narrative-led championship mode and gives you real consequences for wrecking your vehicle and losing races. But it goes so much further than that. Turning career mode into a series of runs makes it a playground for experimenting with different builds in, and that’s something racing games just don’t do.
Along each run in Galactic Racer you earn credits, parts, abilities, and upgrades. Some of those rewards are pretty orthodox and can be used for straightforward buffs like a better cornering stat or a higher top speed, as we’ve been accustomed to in the genre for decades.
But many rewards come with an RNG-ified twist. Say during one run, you see an upgrade card that makes your ramjet booster 20% more powerful while you’re overheated. You remember that the next planet you’re racing on is Jakku, a scorched desert where your speeder overheats almost instantly. So you start to design your whole build around overheating quickly and staying overheated, to give your ram jet godlike power. Get it wrong and you blow up, incurring damage that must be repaired so that it doesn’t impair your stats and abilities. Get it right, and you feel like you’re on that unstoppable Balatro run.
In an open world racer, you can do everything. In Galactic Racer, you've got to make the choice. “
Better still, the run structure has a way of turning all the game’s other brilliant little flourishes into important roguelite variables. Most obvious are the status effects you’ll encounter on each planet’s widely differing climate and conditions. The aforementioned Jakku brings the risk of overheating, while Ando Prime presents the opposite problem: its glacial plains will freeze your engines unless you find warmer pockets. Your interplanetary championship hop might include several status effects to be wary of.
On its own, this addition gets you thinking about taking different lines through tracks, to find shade on hot planets or look for ramps over corrosive pools. And that’s great in itself, but when combined with the parts and upgrades available in each run, it becomes the inspiration for specific vehicle builds. You can turn ostensibly negative status effects to your advantage.
And it goes deeper. Little touches like the pre-race checks – essentially QTEs that make you feel like you’re arming various aspects of your vehicle – on their own are just a nice touch that makes you feel somehow more physically in control and planted in your vehicle. But as you go through a run, you pick up backers who fund your racing and provide tokens. On one run, a particular backer might reward you for completing a certain number of pre-race checks, and you might really need those reward credits to repair your ramjet. Suddenly a nice touch becomes an important part of the story of this run.
The potential for that structure to shake up other racing games is just so juicy. EA F1’s driver career mode is no slouch, but imagine how it’d be elevated if, when you crashed your car, it gave you real and lasting consequences to deal with. What if being busted by the cops in Need For Speed didn’t just lose you credits, but your car and your career mode progress too?
Hardcore racing simulators shouldn’t turn a blind eye, either. If you’re willing to brave unranked public lobbies and scrutinise toe-in angles, it’s not a leap to imagine that a solo career where failure carries consequences might appeal.
Maybe it’s the open world racing game that can crib most effectively from Star Wars: Galactic Racer, though. Forza Horizon 6’s no-fail, maximalist approach is tremendous fun, but the sense of progress and accomplishment is hurt by the pace it throws cars and credits at you, win or lose. What if each entry to Horizon Festival told a different story, and making it onto Legend Island wasn’t a given?
“In an open world racer, you can decide [what] you're going to get after” says Fuse creative director Kieran Crimmins. “You can essentially do everything. Whereas in this, you've got to make the choice. Those choices really matter and they may be your ultimate demise or the path to victory.”
Like Half-Life’s Gravity Gun, the Crysis Nanosuit, and Shadow of Mordor’s (egregiously copyrighted) Nemesis System, what Fuse Games has created here is the sort of system you actively miss in other games. The sort of idea that could level up a genre if it proliferates. And there’s signs that it will. Galactic Racer is not the only roguelite motorsport game to have launched this year – we’ve also seen Carmageddon: Rogue Shift and Driving Rogue, both of which were developed in parallel with Fuse’s work. Clearly it’s not just Webster and his team that have recognised how this formula can be fitted into the genre’s engine bay. At long last, racing games have found a way to tell emergent stories and to reward replayability with build experimentation, and that finally lets go of the Rookies Cup.
Phil Iwaniuk is a veteran hardware smasher and game botherer who has written for the likes of PC Format, Official PlayStation Magazine, PCGamesN, The Guardian, Eurogamer, Rock, Paper, Shotgun, and IGN. He won an award once, but he doesn't like to go on about it. %!s(
Image: Capcom via Polygon
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