"Fling to the Finish" is a handheld (Nintendo Switch) game that's also been put on Steam as a bit of an afterthought, as it's very much designed for the handheld gaming audience. It's a gimmick game, basically, it's a low poly/cartoony Switch racing game with a single twist, it's co-op as you should play with another player and use a rubberbandy low quality physics engine to "fling" yourself along the racecourse. The racecourses are a variety of surreal/wacky/microracer style environments.

Once the amusement factor of the janky flinging physics wears off this is a fairly mediocre racer without much merit for PC gamers considering there's games like Project Cars etc on PC.

There's a co-op focus to the game, so you need to co-ordinate with your friends to play this... I guess that's easier for the developer than making a compelling single player experience. Creating content is hard! Why bother?

Like I always say, if the only thing that makes a game fun is your friends, that just proves it's fun to spend time with your friends, and doesn't say much for the game at all.

On the upside, the game does feature customisable controls and resolution, so at least some of the basic, minimum requirements have been met. Unfortunately there's a number of other technical defects and shortcomings which contribute to the game being difficult to recommend to gamers.

The game features low-polygon "retro" assets with cartoony, mobile app style shader effects, making this look like a barely functional mobile app from 15 years ago. This visual style is a method that lazy devs often use when they have a lack of interest/capabilty to create highly detailed, high poly models and instead use shader effects to disguise that shortcoming under the name of "art", or "We made it look bad on purpose", which really isn't something gamers should have to put up with. It's unclear why the developers weren't willing to arrange high quality, high polygon count contemporary assets and high resolution textures for the game. It's far below the state of the art visuals gamers expect as a result of their decisions.

Because this is designed for handheld/portable gaming appliances, it carries a number of deliberate design deficiencies. Compromises were made to cater to the low power handheld gaming appliances that the game was designed for. These are unfortunate compromises and limitations that PC gamers shouldn't be forced to accept, but it's evident that PC was a second thought for the mobile game developers. The game is deficient as a result of these choices, and would have been so much better without the handicaps that designing games for low power handhelds forces upon a game. While this might run well on a Steam Deck, we must remember the vast majority of gamers here are gaming on PC.

These technical defects push this game below acceptable standards for any modern PC game.

So, should you buy this game? Is this one of the best of the 100,000+ games on Steam?

"Fling to the Finish" has the pathetically optimistic price of $20 USD, for which you could easily get any number of older AAA games. Given the defects and quality issues with the game, coupled with the unrealistic price, this is impossible to recommend. For comparison, the $20 asking price for this game could get you games like "Rise of the Tomb Raider", "Prey" or "Dead by Daylight". Quality, professionally made games like those are frequently on sale cheaper than this.

Unfortunately Steam reviewers aren't presented with a "Maybe" option... if they did, that's what I'd choose. This isn't a completely bad game, but it's also not one of the best. As always, if you read my review and you can overlook the negatives I've called out, or they just aren't important to you, then by all means go ahead and buy this.