Australian indie developer Exbleative, the studio behind Exo One, a space exploration atmospheric game where you fly an alien craft, is at it again with yet another indie gem: Exo Rally Championship. One of the highlights of its previous game, Exo One, was the racing part, as players must often times build momentum to reach the necessary speeds to jump over high mountains.
Most of the racing in Exo One was done on alien planets, and the alien craft would be able to ride thermal updrafts, as well as control gravity itself to allow for longer gliding or higher jumping. The studio’s upcoming game, Exo Rally Championship, takes the more mundane part of racing and puts it at players’ disposal to enjoy.
This time around, you won’t be flying a UFO-like vessel. Instead, you’ll take the wheel of an advanced RCS thruster-enhanced rover and try to win “the galaxy’s most dangerous off-road racing event.” What makes the game unique is the fact that players will race on remote, unexplored, extreme exoplanetary tracks, so having your rover well-prepared before the race is of utmost importance.
“After making Exo One I really wanted to explore traversal on other worlds from a totally different angle. Exoplanetary rally brings together all the elements of an exoplanet and challenges you to face them head on - its gravity, terrain, weather, atmosphere, and endless hazards. Every aspect of the planet is materially affecting your rover and your time, pushing you dangerously close to the limit,” said Jay Weston, creator of Exo Rally.
Without the limitations of a traditional track, players must speed between waypoints on procedurally generated stages, which will be filled with weather effects and major terrain challenges specific to off-road racing.
Photo: Exbleative
Revealed during the PC Gaming Showcase early this week, Exo Rally Championship promises hardcore off-road physics simulation, realistic tire models, drive-trains, suspension, damage, fuel-limited RCS-style thrusters for jumping, landing, air controls, and much more to help players properly race on off-road environments.
In addition, developer Exbleative confirmed that the game will feature an expansive career mode, which will be based on real-world rally, Baja, and Dakar events. Off-road racing fans should also expect a deep management layer that will allow them to customize, tune, and repair their rovers.
Interestingly enough, because planets and stages are procedurally generated, no playthrough will be the same. This means that you can get very high or very low temperatures and winds, strange terrain formations, and very bad weather all in a single stage. Or you can get any mixture of this, which makes each race a real challenge.
I’m not sure how you are going to be able to prepare your rover for exoplanetary rally if you don’t know in advance the conditions, but the whole customization and tuning parts will probably be accessible after the stage is procedurally generated.
Photo: Exbleative
Although the game doesn’t seem to have a multiplayer component, players will be able to share seeds with friends to generate the same stages and compete for the best times. It’s an understandable compromise that should satisfy racing fans, at least until the game gets a proper multiplayer mode if developers have enough resources to pull it off.
According to developers, Exo Rally Championship is a “brutally realistic racing simulation” game, although I’m not sure how many of us raced in an alien environment to be able to tell how realistic it truly is. However, the career mode is inspired by Earth’s iconic rally events, so we’ll probably be able to recognize some of these (like the already confirmed Baja and Dakar).
But since you’re not going to race on Earth, even these tracks inspired by Earth’s rally events will feel very different due to the planet’s gravity, terrain, weather, atmosphere, and hazards. All of these will be different than what we have on Earth, and when you combine them, you have a very challenging off-road race event. I’m pretty curious how the folks at Exbleative will be able to pull this off, but considering that Exo One was a success, I’m fairly confident that this will be very enjoyable, especially if you love off-road racing.
Along with the game’s reveal during the PC Gaming Show, the folks at Exbleative put out a gameplay trailer that offers players a glance at what’s to come. Exo Rally Championship will only be available on PC, but it won’t be out until 2024, so we’ll probably be hearing more about this in the time leading up to its release.
For the time being, a Steam release is confirmed, so those interested in an unusual off-road racing game can wishlist Exo Rally Championship to be notified about its launch. In fact, I encourage everyone, even mildly interested in this, to whislist it because it does make a difference for small teams like Exbleative, which like to take risks and come up with something original in the indie gaming space.
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