Description
Reality Drift is a roguelike racing game where your choices matter. Race through a series of strange worlds, choose upgrades for your car and decide which track will be next - your decisions are just as important as how you drive!
You'll be carrying out deliveries for a cast of strange, self-important, entitled characters including:
- Pisces Silverscale, King of the Ocean. He thinks he's a big deal, but he's actually just a stupid fish-man.
- John Stonks, CEO of the City (any resemblance to a certain billionaire is not coincidental)
- Vincenzo, the depraved and bloodthirsty Prince of the Fungus Kingdom
- Laika, the first dog in space, reanimated by aliens and back for vengeance
In each mission, you'll race across 8 or more tracks. At the end of each track, you choose between three options, each of which consists of a new track and a linked stat upgrade. The core stats are ACCEL, MAX SPEED and GRIP. Certain tracks are better suited to certain stat upgrades - e.g. the "Cat Land" track is the fastest, without any tight corners, so goes well with a max speed upgrade, but if your max speed is already more than sufficient, accel or grip might be a better choice. On the other hand, the player may make a choice where the stat upgrade doesn't synergise with the next track, because it might be better in the longer term. For example, you might choose the "Fungus Kingdom" track with a linked "+10 MAX SPEED" upgrade - the track has a lot of tight corners so you might not be able to take full advantage of the max speed upgrade on that track, but it might be that your other stats are already decent and your max speed is holding you back.
You'll race against 99 CPU opponents who are subject to the same rules and have to decide between the same upgrade options. The only thing the CPU cars can't do is choose the next track. In addition to the core stats of ACCEL, MAX SPEED and GRIP, extra powerups are often available including REGEN BRAKING, SHIELD, ANTIGRAV, NAVIGATOR and FORESIGHT.
As you win races you'll unlock a total of 25 missions, each with its own twist on the formula. Winning all races will unlock New Game+ where the difficulty is raised and your mastery of the game will truly be tested!
Developer background
Reality Drift is the creation of Andrew Gillett, a 25-year videogame industry veteran who previously worked at Frontier Developments on games such as RollerCoaster Tycoon 3, Dog's Life, Thrillville, LostWinds 2, Kinectimals and Elite Dangerous. He has also worked with Raspberry Pi co-founder Eben Upton on the Code the Classics series of books.
From the creator's own mouth
I had the idea for Reality Drift while watching a Slay the Spire streamer. An artist known as Zyalin had
done some great artwork for his stream intro, including a piece showing an old-school campervan driving
off a ramp. I'd recently done a 2.5D racing game for the book Code the Classics Volume 2, and I'd been
thinking of porting it to Unity - seeing this artwork on a Slay the Spire stream gave me the idea of
incorporating more modern gameplay elements into a retro-style racing game.
I've seen a lot of 2.5D retro racing games with very similar aesthetics (e.g. 80s neon) and fairly
simplistic and short-lived gameplay. I grew up playing games like Outrun, which still stands up well
graphically, but I wanted to see what could be achieved by moving away from a pixel art style. Outrun
also isn't a game that most people today would play for 10+ hours. By adding a roguelike structure
and meaningful choices, I created a game which takes minutes to learn but many hours to master. Success
involves not just driving well but more importantly, choosing the right upgrades and tracks at the
right moments. Even after working on the game for over two years, I can't say that I've totally
mastered it. When I narrowly lose a race, I'll often wonder whether an earlier choice was the right
one in retrospect.
This will be my second solo Steam release, but the first for which I've spent real money on proper
artists instead of using bad programmer art. Humour is always a focus for me, I've enjoyed coming up
with some very silly characters and dialogue.
It's also my biggest game project since my career in the mainstream videogame industry was cut short
by health problems brought on by excessive crunch. At the age of 27, I suddenly developed all kinds of
weird symptoms in my arms and hands including pain, weakness, tingling and numbness. I went from being
a very productive developer to only being able to do a fraction of what I used to do. I had to take six
months off work, but even after going back I was still in a really bad place. I struggled on for five
more years, then had to leave as I could no longer work at all. That was 2013, life was pretty bad.
I was doing a lot of exercise to try to improve my condition. At one point I was out running and tried
to write “HELP” on a field using MapMyRun GPS tracking. Even though things are a lot better now, I
still don't think I'll ever be able to do a normal full-time job again. Having been through all that,
I consider it a great success to have gone from barely being able to use a computer, to developing one
of the best games I've worked on.
