Earlier than enjoying Star Wars: Galactic Racer at Summer season Sport Fest 2026, I’d assumed that it will be an exhilarating, if considerably light-weight, racer, permitting long-time Star Wars followers to smash their motion figures collectively and pilot some traditional ships from throughout the sequence.
What I wasn’t anticipating was a Star Wars model of Burnout that’s additionally primarily a racing roguelike. Star Wars: Galactic Racer is being developed by Fuse, a staff fashioned in 2023 that’s full to the brim with Critereon veterans. Should you didn’t already know that earlier than enjoying Star Wars: Galactic Racer, you’d work it out fairly shortly.
From the sense of velocity to the voyeuristic obsession with autos smashing into partitions at absurd velocity, Star Wars: Galactic Racer is pure Burnout. That will have genuinely been sufficient for me. I’ve been determined for the sequence to return for half of my life, and whereas different racers have gotten someplace close to the fun of the unique sequence, Star Wars: Galactic Racer is nearer to scratching the itch than another.
The connection to Burnout goes far past purely mechanical, based on the minds behind the sport. Matt Webster, founder & CEO, Fuse Video games, and Craig Derrick, govt producer, Lucasfilm Video games spoke to Summer season Sport Fest and revealed that Star Wars and Burnout have been linked lengthy earlier than Galactic Racer.
“We prefer to assume that Burnout ripped off Episode One crashing, that’s actually what we predict! We’ve returned,” Derrick instructed VGC.
Matt Webster added, “You’re completely proper. We completely did, as a result of we’d go take a bunch of that as reference, and we’d use these digicam cuts and the blueprints and the bounces. However yeah, we completely did that, yeah.”
“Impressed by it, not ripped off…,” Derrick replied.
On prime of that rock-solid gameplay basis, Fuse has constructed an intriguing marketing campaign mode that makes Star Wars: Galactic Racer way over the pass-the-time arcade racer some had been anticipating. You play as Shade, a mysterious masked racer who plans to enter Excursions to dethrone the champion. Not solely is there an enormous quantity of voice-acted lore right here, however way more Star Wars races and planets appeared in our hour-long session than I used to be anticipating from the complete sport.
In response to Derrick and Webster, the sport takes place simply after the occasions of Return of the Jedi.
Each say the sport’s story is impressed by “the tip of World Warfare 2,” when troopers and mechanics who’d beforehand been members of the armed forces needed to return to regular life. Within the US, this resulted within the beginning of the Scorching Rod scene, the place youngsters and younger adults started modifying and racing mannequin vehicles. In Star Wars: Galactic Racer, former troopers, on each the Insurgent and Empire aspect, now use their abilities to race and preserve speederbikes, landspeeders, and extra.
At the beginning of every run within the sport’s marketing campaign, you’ll be given a League Token, which is actually your entry to that event. You may select occasions on a grid, every of which is able to present particular rewards. These are primarily branching paths, that means that every Tour you enter, you possibly can work in the direction of the precise rewards you need.
Nonetheless, the catch is that if you happen to crash out too usually on a run, you’ll be eradicated, and your progress will probably be misplaced. You’ll nonetheless get some rewards for what you’ve already carried out, however you’ll have to start out from the start of the race sequence once more.
In observe, which means that you pay way more consideration to the well being of your ship, and your total lives than you’d if there was no peril aside from shedding a race you might merely restart. It additionally provides a risk-versus-reward system for which races you select to interact in in your run. Should you’re operating low on lives, you most likely don’t wish to choose a decent, high-speed course that you just’re extraordinarily more likely to crash on, even when the rewards are nice.
There are methods to heal your car and lengthen your run; nevertheless, we didn’t see a lot of that in our early-game session. This roguelike ingredient within the sport’s marketing campaign is a intelligent manner so as to add stakes to what may simply have been a easy checklist of racers to compete towards. What little I acquired to see of the story itself made me eager to see extra, with witty writing and obscure Star Wars races getting their second to shine. There’s an Ardennian mechanic within the sport that could be the primary Scouser in Star Wars historical past.
Whenever you’re really in a race, the driving (flying?) in Star Wars: Galactic Racer feels glorious. There’s a weight to the ships that makes them really feel supercar-like even once they’re not tethered to the bottom. Equally, the drifting feels precisely the way you’d need it to really feel.
Fuse is effectively conscious of the distinctive challenges supplied by making a racing sport with fantasy autos, however the agency’s boss, Matt Webster, instructed us that not being confined by vehicles touching the tracks gave the staff lots of freedom.
“This roguelike ingredient within the sport’s marketing campaign is a intelligent manner so as to add stakes to what may simply have been a easy checklist of racers to compete towards.”
“We’ve carried out car-based video games, and now, once we’re not certain by the constraint of a tire touching tarmac, what does that do to how we design race tracks? So a few of the issues right here, we’ve acquired huge drops, and massive climbs, and it’s type of like 3D racing.
“It’s going up a hill in a automotive, however right here we’re ripping up the aspect of a volcano via a tropical rainforest and dropping down. It permits us to do, not simply that visceral spectacle really feel is nice, however really the racing in these issues, like make it tight, make it extensive open for a bunch of various varieties.”
The one concern I bumped into was having the ability to sight-read a few of the tracks. You’re racing via Star Wars places, and though they’ve clearly been formed right into a racing track-ish configuration, there have been nonetheless a couple of moments the place it was troublesome to inform which course the upcoming flip was, or if I used to be heading in the direction of a leap or a strong wall. That is one thing gamers will seemingly get used to once they play the identical tracks a number of instances in a row, however contemplating the velocity the sport goes at, a couple of extra in-world indicators of course wouldn’t go amiss.
Outdoors of the marketing campaign mode, there’s additionally an arcade mode to your conventional time-trial and informal racing. It’s right here I acquired to check out Podracing. I performed as Sebulba and flew across the Mos Espa observe, greatest recognized from the one watchable sequence in The Phantom Menace. Becoming a member of me had been Gasgano, Ebe E. Endocott, Ben Quadinaros, and different traditional characters recognized solely to Wookieepedia season ticket holders.
“I believe if you happen to’re gonna have podracing, individuals are going to surprise the place Subulba is,” stated Derrick.
“We all know the place all our characters are, we all know the place they had been within the tales we’ve proven in our movies and video games. Many instances we haven’t proven these tales, so when Matt and the staff stated they had been going to create model new characters for our story, however we additionally wish to re-introduce some acquainted faces… we’re there to determine “okay, Sebulba, the place was he after Episode 1, did he survive? The place did he go after that?” In our story, he performs a fairly vital position.”
Podracing was frantic, extremely fast-paced, and really fairly troublesome to manage. That is largely because of the completely ridiculous velocity of the pod-racers themselves. I most well-liked the heavier autos of the marketing campaign mode, however if you happen to’re making a Star Wars sport like this, together with the Podracers was important.
Star Wars: Galactic Racer’s presentation is superb to this point. The visuals are robust, and the sport ran fantastically throughout my session. Clearly, the music is superb, however that’s primarily a cheat code while you’re making a Star Wars sport.
I’m thrilled with what I’ve performed of Star Wars: Galactic Racer to this point. It’s a high-octane racer that may thrill Burnout followers, however past that, the sport’s marketing campaign mode has a depth that I didn’t anticipate. My important query now’s the size of the marketing campaign, and simply how completely different every run may be. However even when the depth proven off on this demo isn’t totally realized within the last sport, the racing itself has carried out greater than sufficient to persuade me.
