Electro Ride: The Neon Racing

Review

Wouldn’t it be fabulous to drive the most popular car of the Cold War era, the Lada car (a re-enforced Fiat 124), fully mounted with external neon lights all around its body, at full speed throughout the streets of East Berlin, Prague, Varna, Warsaw or Moscow? (I have a feeling that a few heads of state would have risen their eyebrows and treated you as a Westerner spy!)  It’s time for you to experience this sensation in Electro Ride: The Neon Racing!

Electro Ride: The Neon Racing is a retro arcade racing game developed by Sylwester Osik and published by Forestlight Games and PlayWay S.A. on the 11^th of July 2020 on Steam.

The game consists of Small Story, Quick Race and Split-Screen modes.

There are 5 destinations in the story:  Warsaw, Varna, Prague, East Berlin and Moscow, in that order. You’ll only have one car available in Warsaw for the upcoming races, of which there are 3. You must finish first in the first 2 races and beat the boss race to move to the next location, which will be Varna. But before you do so, you’ll be able to choose an additional car from those that you raced in Warsaw to add to your garage.  It will be the same each time you beat the boss of the city all the way to Moscow. The interesting point here is that all the cars have three attributes, which are Acceleration, V-Max (or booster) and Steering, but you don’t know the layout of the first track at the next destination before choosing a new car. It could be a fast layout track, which would suit a car with higher acceleration and V-Max, or it could be a slower track with plenty of turns, and therefore a car with superior steering and V-max will be more suitable; you’ll have to find out for yourself.

In the quick race option, you’ll be able to select between Time Attack, Last Man Standing and Ghost Mode. All 20 tracks and 21 cars will up for selection as long as you finish the story mode first in all destinations. The same thing with the split-screen mode, but the difference is the ability to play against another player on your local PC.

I really had fun playing this game! After you select your car and its neon colours (yellow, blue or purple) at the start of the race, the countdown will start, and you’ll be on your way to your first win. You can choose the level of difficulty (Easy, Normal and Hard) the race. Each track will have several checkpoints, and between these checkpoints, you’ll have one or two boost areas where your car will reach higher speeds and acceleration for a couple of seconds. These boost areas are basically rectangular marks in one of the three neon colours, displayed within the 3 lanes of the track. They are preceded by a star of the same colour that indicates which lane to use in order to activate the V-boost that corresponds to your car’s colour. If you start the race with the neon blue colour on your car then it would be wiser to position your car in the correct lane. Where it becomes interesting and harder is when you are behind your competitors at full speed, and you are about to reach a V-boost point.  You might be on the right-hand lane where your current neon colour V-boost mark is positioned, but you are about to negotiate a tight left end corner where a yellow V-boot mark is displayed right after the corner. The car in front of you displays the same colour as your car (blue, for example) but reaches the yellow star first and therefore the car becomes yellow and will be able to active the V-boost Mark ahead and increase the gap between both cars. And vice versa. But there comes a point where you have to choose to keep a better driving line and forget about the boosts, or to find a better path, change colours frequently and use the V-boost to your advantage.  

You also can race with a couple of third persons, as well as front and dashboard views, which is fun (personally, I crashed left, right and centre while playing with the front and dashboard views).

Vibrant artwork, and the soundtrack is excellent.  I also like that each car feels different to drive, and the physics are well done. There is not much to the story, to be honest, and I would have liked more destinations and tracks. If you are of a competitive nature, each track has its own leaderboard, so you can see where you stand in terms of track time against your friends.

Review written by THE CPT FROGGY for Zeepond.com!