BAFL: Brakes Are For Losers

Review

I have been a car fanatic for many years. In fact, I follow the Formula 1 calendar every single year. Not in person but via Pay TV. In any case, I heard about a racing arcade game where you hardly ever use the brakes, and I thought to myself, what the BAFL is this about?! And then, the light . . . shining above my head with a big inscription – Brakes Are For Losers!

BAFL is retro arcade racing / local multiplayer game where you take on seven other competitive and crazy racers, with a view to winning the mighty BAFL championship.

As you start the game, you will appear in a roundabout in control of a rather spunky, funky car. From here, you choose which direction you want to take. If you go north, you’ll see the credits of all those who were involved in creating the game. Going south, you’ll see a parking spot where you’ll be able to swap cars. Make you way east, and you’ll find challenge modes where you’ll be able to participate in one of several time races. Here, you’ll have to go around a track for certain number of laps as fast as you can. Hopefully you‘ll become the fastest driver on the leader board.  Choose to go west and you’ll be able to select either the championship, which involves ten races, or a quick race on your favourite track.  Otherwise you can create your own free brakes championship.

The gameplay is a top down eighties/nineties arcade style of game. Depending the mode of play, you have to do a certain number of laps or you have to go around the track until the time runs out. It’s super fun and fast either way! The main feature of the game is the fact that you don’t have brakes and you have to navigate tracks without touching any edges or any other competitors. If you do, your car will be damaged and you’ll stop for a few second in the middle of the track for repairs, which will allow the other cars to overtake you. Don’t worry, it will happen to both you and your opponents several times during the course of the races. One way to help you keep rolling through the laps is to stop at the pit when your car is about eighty percent damaged. Repair it all and keep going around until the end of the race. And yes, pit stops will be frequent and must be a part of your strategy. But that’s not all! You have power-ups popping up left, right and centre to make your race as difficult as possible. Icons such as missiles, an old man with a stick (slow motion), sunglasses (blindness) and others will appear randomly on the circuit. All you have to do (if you can, of course) is to hover over these icons to activate them. Most of them will slow down or stop your opponents for a few seconds. Also, some of the tracks are surrounded by water, which will spill onto the asphalt. A pirate ship might fire cannonballs on the track, or maybe you’ll race on the moon with meteorites hitting your car (which will be rather unfortunate).  And with all of that, you’ll still have no brakes! Rather fun, don’t you think?

Depending on you position at the end of each race in the championship, you will earn coins that give  you the ability to upgrade one of six components of the car: speed, armour, handling, brakes, repairing and adhesion.

The graphics are retro and fun. The soundtrack is ok and the controls are pretty responsive, either using a gamepad or keyboard. I would have loved to have seen a track editor, as ten tracks is not a lot. However, there are three types of difficulty which can give you plenty of re-playability.  It is also really fun racing with friends on a local network.