Anyone who knows me knows that I'm somewhat of a racing game junkie. Gran Turismo is my favorite video game franchise of all time, and I've always been surrounded by the genre for practically my whole life. I'm always excited to see what types of racing games are coming out and when I found this game, I knew I had to grab it because it looked really cool. It had the feel of something that I would've been aware of in my childhood.

Released on October 3rd 2024, Victory Heat Rally was developed by Skydevilpalm (a pixel art and game development studio based in Las Vegas) and published by Playtonic Friends (a British developer made by former members of Rare, and famously developed the Yooka-Laylee games). As the resident racing game guy on the Out of Games squad, I've taken it on myself to play it and write this review for you all.

Grab your coins and your nostalgia hat because we're going old-school today. Released earlier this month, Victory Heat Rally is a racing game that harkens back to the arcade racer wave of the 1990s. Join me from this blast from the past as we put our pedal to the floor!

Welcome to Victory Heat Rally


Racing all over the green, wireframed globe!

First and foremost, this game is all… about… racing! The Championship mode does technically have a story, but it’s pretty much entirely for flavor. Throughout the game, you’ll encounter reporter Sally McRally giving you the scoop on what’s happening in the VHRC (Victory Heat Rally Championship) presented in universe as part of VHN (Victory Heat Network). This, by and large, doesn't really mean anything important, but it’s cool to see this piece of flavor in the game nonetheless. It reminds me of Split Second, another racing game that presents itself as a show on a network for flavor (and also a really good game).

She’ll give you some fun flavor text and information on what will happen in the next set of races when she introduces them and this is also where you’ll see some of the characters in this game, but this is something we’ll get to a bit later. Championship mode sees the player going through multiple different “tours” of races and challenges to encounter and unlock new characters. I said that the game harkened back to arcade racers of the 1990s, and this structure is exactly what I would expect from a racing game released on the PS1 or the N64. The 5-year old in me is happy.

Outside of the Championship mode, there’s an Arcade mode where you can pick a cup and play a series of 4 different race tracks. In fitting with the arcade-y nature of the game, it will record your whole time after you’re done with the cup and you can type your initials. There’s also a Time Trial mode where you pick a car and a track and set the fastest time you can. There’s even a split-screen versus mode too if you want to bring your buddies along for the ride.

These are all the standard bells and whistles of a racing game on an arcade cabinet, but something that is somewhat odd is that there’s no single race mode. There are single races in the Championship mode, but otherwise your single race options are either that mode or none at all. To be fair, this is accurate to real life arcade cabinet racing games, but it felt a bit awkward to see on a game that I’m clearly not playing on an arcade cabinet for. It also meant that it took a bit longer than I initially planned to get all of the gameplay screenshots for this article, which I actually don’t mind all that much because I had a lot of fun playing it.

During the Championship mode, you’ll also encounter some challenges ranging from overtaking a certain number of cars, slalom tests where you have to pass through gates, drifting challenges where you have to really nail your drifting lines, and many other things like this. There’s no way to play them outside of this mode, but these are a fun side-hustle that will help you meet other medal requirements.

What Are We Racing Here?


Does the menu bring you back a couple of decades? It's okay, it does for me too.

Before you can drive, you’ve got to select what you drive and who you’re driving with. It’s not actually possible to see your character in-game (aside from a tiny static window at the top-left), nor are there any cutscenes where your character choice matters, meaning that what you’re really choosing is the car. Your character is almost incidental, but it’s a fun bit of flavor to have as you’re picking your car.

At the start of a new save file, you only have three characters unlocked. On your way through Championship mode, you’ll encounter nine other characters. Each league has a character you can unlock at the end through an optional side-by-side challenge. As you would expect, each character naturally has different stats, but you can actually influence this before you race by choosing different springs and tire options which will have a small, but meaningful effect on your stats. The character designs are unique and distinguishable, although the car designs aren't anywhere as varied as the characters.

Each character also has four alternate paint jobs to collect, which are unlocked by winning 4, 8, 12, and 16 races respectively with that specific character. This lines up perfectly with the fact that cups are all four races long meaning that you pretty much unlock a paint job by beating a cup (at least, if you happen to win all the races).

Enough Chatter, Let's Drive!


Pink is power!

A racing game is only as good as the way it drives, and the driving in Victory Heat Rally is EXTREMELY fun.

The first thing I’m going to say is that while the game does have the option to use a keyboard, it recommends that you use a controller, which is exactly what I did. Furthermore, be aware that by default, the game uses the face buttons to accelerate and brake. If I were playing on a PlayStation controller, this would be fine, but on an Xbox controller, the face buttons are not designed to be used like that, so I swapped to use the triggers for this instead. For some reason, the game was able to save my control settings, but not my stick deadzone settings to counter my stick drifting and I had to change that every time I opened the game.

The game is characterized a lot by its drifting mechanics and understanding how to drift is quite important if you’re going to do well. If you’ve ever played a Mario Kart game, you know that drifting is important because it’s how you build boost and navigate around the turns. That principle basically applies here too. The game uses a drift-boost system where you can build up your drift boost up to 3 levels. As someone who loves Crash Team Racing, this system felt very familiar and intuitive. The drift-boost system in this game is wonderful. But while the game takes some elements of kart racers, the game has absolutely no power-ups at all. The only thing that matters here is your racing prowess, so you’ve gotta learn how to be a drift master.

I’m not sure if this is a bug or a feature, but I also found that if you let go of your drift and immediately press the drift button again, you wouldn’t drift right away, but instead you could chain the boost you built up into a new drift and keep chaining drifts together to build up a bigger drift-boost. This felt a bit inconsistent sometimes, but it was a very helpful trick for navigating some sections of the tougher courses and it made the drifting score challenges much easier.

Additionally, when driving behind cars that are a full lap behind you, you (but not the AI) can freely ram into them and destroy them without slowing you down. My best guess as to why this mechanic exists is so the player wouldn’t get slowed down by lapped cars that quite frankly, just get in the way of the actual road. I wouldn’t have minded if this mechanic didn’t exist, but it’s cool that they thought about designing an anti-frustration mechanic around lapped cars.

The driving itself however is very fun. It’s smooth, responsive, and I feel like I’m in complete control of the vehicle at all times. Steering is not too sluggish or too sudden, and it’s just a load of fun to whip around the tracks at high speed while trying to find the best lines to drift around the corners. Despite the homage to arcade racing games, there’s very oddly no timer anywhere (except in certain challenges), though it wouldn't really add anything except for flavor.

Full Throttle Through Furious Freeways!


Road safety codes evidently do not exist in this universe.

One of the most important things about any racing game is the track design. The driving physics could be the best possible, but if the tracks aren’t cool and don’t look good, then the whole experience falls flat.

The track design is definitely a high point for me. There's a huge variety in the tracks and all of them look really cool. You’ll go to a bunch of different settings from the beach to the jungle to a skyscraper to some mountain roads. There’s even some courses where you drive on top of a roller coaster! How many racing games can you say let you drive on top of a roller coaster? You may be inclined to believe that an arcade-inspired racing game wouldn’t have that many different courses, but there actually a lot of different courses in this game. Many of them do use the same scenic set-pieces as other tracks, but they're all varied enough in design that it didn't feel like any of them were just "copies" of each other.

There are two main different track types: Circuit and Rally. If you’ve played any other racing game in existence, you’ll already know what both of these are. If however you’ve somehow never played a racing game in your life and managed to find your way onto this review page, Circuit tracks are tracks that loop around back at the starting point (or in other words, they’re “circuits”) and once you finish a set number of laps, the race is over. Rally tracks on the other hand are point-to-point tracks like a typical rally stage would be, and you even get arcade-style rally co-driver pace notes. You’ll encounter both types of tracks pretty regularly.

How do the tracks look though? As you’ve probably been able to tell from all of the screenshots in the article, the art style of this game is absolutely phenomenal! The game uses sprite-based anime-esque pixel art for the characters and the cars, and this is some of the best pixel art that I’ve ever seen in my life. The characters all look cool and unique and the Choro-Q inspiration in the car models is quite charming. The tracks themselves use a more polygonal system akin to fifth-generation consoles (and obviously, arcade games of that same time period) that make everything really come alive and stand out.

How would I describe the OST of this game? If Ridge Racer was an anime, this game’s soundtrack is exactly what it would use, and I mean that in the best possible way. The music in this game is a perfect, fast-paced bop that gets you in the mood to drive and drive really fast. I swear there’s a song that outright samples Jet Set Radio, but I don’t mind because that game is awesome. If you buy the game on Steam, you can also buy the soundtrack files with it, which is exactly what I did.

Does the Game Take Home the Gold?


Road, dirt, snow. Your tires can take all of it on.

It’s kinda hard to sell just exactly how awesome this game is without making repetitive statements like “this game is amazing, just play it!” but Victory Heat Rally is a fun, eye-popping thrill ride that entertains from beginning to end. It’s colorful, it’s beautiful, and it’s satisfying to play. I’d love for Skydevilpalm to make a sequel to this if the interest existed.

There are a couple of things here and there that maybe would make the game even better such as a proper single race mode, some more variety in the car designs, and a proper results screen after each race. It’s also a bit weird that this game has no online multiplayer mode. Not that I would really use it that much (if at all) because I’m not that type of gamer, and I do realize that this leans into the arcade game angle, but a racing game in 2024 with no online multiplayer mode feels a bit weird. It is still quite a new game so maybe all of that comes later?

Pros

  • Responsive and fun driving physics.
  • Charming and highly detailed art style.
  • Huge number of fun track designs that don't feel too similar to other tracks.
  • Bopping soundtrack that gets you in the mood to race.

Cons

  • Inconsistency with which options are saved and which ones aren't.
  • Lack of a single race mode.
  • Not much variety in the car designs.

Victory Heat Rally can currently be bought on the Steam shop for $20 and I wouldn't be surprised to see it released elsewhere soon. If you're a racing game fan of any type, then this game absolutely gets my recommendation for you.

Are you interested in checking the game out? Some of you may already have. Let us know in the comments below what you think of the game.