Following a message from developer Arganoid Industries, we’re excited to see a new indie racer on the horizon coming to Steam in the future. The developer has described Reality Drift as “a roguelike racing game where your choices matter.” These two genres don’t seem like good bedfellows but it certainly does create some intrigue as to how this game plays. We’re lucky for you Arganoid Industries has sent us a preview build to dash through.

From what we’ve played so far this game will definitely appeal to those who have a penchant for hypnotic visuals and sounds during video games. If you’re, like us, old enough to remember Jeff Minter’s psychedelic colour fests from Llamasoft then you’ll understand what this game is all about. You drive a simple van down procedurally generated tracks that change scenery every few minutes.

It’s fair to say right from the off, that Reality Drift probably will not appeal to the racing fans who enjoy high octane excitement and realsitic handling. However, those who enjoy levelling up characters, procedurally generated stages and random presentations, will find a a lot of joy here. Controlling your campervan couldn’t be easier with most of the focus being on the sceneray rather than difficult driving.

As you progress through the stages of each mission, you need to choose which upgrade to take next to make sure you stay ahead of the other 99 racers trying to win the race. Get your playthrough to build wrong, and just like any good roguelite title you won’t get very far. It took us a couple of goes to win a race but once we started to work out what upgrades needed to be in place first, we were flying along.

The standout feature of Reality Drift is its trippy visuals and trance-like music. It certainly looks the part and it’s fun watching all the colours and imagery morph every so often. Whether this will be enough to help Reality Drift stand out from the crowd, only time will tell, there is still at least a year left for development. From what we played, there will need to be some more gameplay mechanics added as the expereince may become repetative too quickly.

For the moment, we recommend any fans of colourful, trippy games to wishlist this, while racing fans may wish to wait for a demo to see if it’s their cup of tea. And finally, for those roguelite fans out there, this one probably doesn’t have enough variety in the play build to warrant considering. All that may change though, we’ll keep tabs on this one as it is certainly intriguing.