Played the demo and liked it very much. I'm now playing the full game. I like it very much. It's pretty easy to pick up and fun to play.

My only critic so far is lack of any kind of result screen after a race is over. No completion time, or any other specific race mode stats. Like, you are presented with an option to restart, but you won't know which medal you got unless you exit back into the map mode (Edit: I noticed that colour of the "GOAL" sign at the end of a race corresponds to the kind of medal you got. Still would prefer to have an expanded result screen). There seems to be a lot of space on that end race screen to display all relevant race stats.

While I love pretty much every aspect of this game, it's awkwardly missing a stats screen after finishing a race.

My time reflects 100%ing the game, that means all gold medals in all events, and all achievements.

This is my favorite racing game and it's not even close. It's a cross between Crash/Mario kart, and the more technical Kart Rider.

I just want more man. I was sad I fully cleared this coz I wanna keep going.

Also Tofu Run is not only the best track, but the best music in the game!

Nominated this for everything I could for the Steam 2024 awards!

Racing games have come a long way since the first representatives of the genre saw the light of day in the arcades of the 1970s. Today, many of the major racing game series look almost as realistic as a television broadcast, and simulate not only detailed vehicle models but also the weather, driving physics and intelligent computer opponents almost perfectly. Victory Heat Rally, however, does not fall into this category. Victory Heat Rally is an arcade fun racer that makes driving and drifting fun without wasting much thought on realism. It is reminiscent of the racing games from the arcades of the 80s, with (fairly) short laps, cartoon-like graphics and lots of action.

At the start of the game, you can choose between several game modes. In “Championship”, the main mode, you play alone and have to become the Victory Heat Rally winner in a series of races. In “Arcade GP” you only drive individual races, while in “Time Attack” you only drive completely alone on the race tracks against the stopwatch. “Versus” is the multiplayer mode in which you compete with up to four friends (and bots) for victory. So how does “Championship” work? The aim is to complete a series of four races. First you choose your driver (each of whom has their own car), with only three to choose from initially. The remaining nine must first be unlocked. The car is then configured a little. Tires, shock absorbers, color (new colors must also be unlocked first) and off you go. The aim now is to finish in the top three in the race against 11 computer opponents. Otherwise it's game over, but you can try again thanks to “Continue”. The controls are easy to use: A to accelerate, X to brake and RT to collect drift in the bends. And that's exactly what you need to do to win a race. When drifting, your drift indicator increases, and when you finish drifting, you get a decent speed boost. There are no extras on the road, and if you hit your opponents during the race, not much happens (usually) except that you lose speed. You also lose speed if you drive on the side of the road, crash into the barriers or even leave the track. However, you cannot damage your racing car. When you exit the race track into a lava pool, you explode and get reset on the track. The screen displays are straightforward - a radar with the track from above, a speedometer, your boost indicator, your current position in the race, which lap you are currently on and the driving time.

Multiplayer races are possible via split screen. Whether there are two, three or four of you sitting on the couch - with enough gamepads you can compete against each other. This is also possible online with the help of Steam Remote Play Together. All you need to do is have a copy of the game and your friends can play along via your screen mirrored on theirs. However, they will need their own gamepad. However, Victory Heat Rally does not offer a “real” online mode, where everyone starts the game directly on their computer.

Conclusion:
Victory Heat Rally is an arcade fun racer. It has little in common with realism, it's all about fun. Keep your car on the racetrack, collect energy by drifting in the bends, which is then discharged in a speed boost. Race tracks and drivers have to be unlocked, and you can compete against your friends (locally) in multiplayer mode. Not a mega hit, but nice little fun for retro fans in single-player mode and great for fun multiplayer races with your friends!

THIS RIPS

It may not look it, but if you love Ridge Racer, Outrun, or Daytona USA, this is as close to that feeling as you're going to get in a modern game. Drifts are so satisfying to pull off, there's a lot of side content to test your skills, and plenty of unlocks and tuning to keep you coming back and trying new things. Incredible soundtrack, super cool and inventive tracks, huge variety of settings, and honestly, in the least corny way possible, pulse pounding gameplay and racing. Genuinely challenging at all the right times, and fun as hell all the rest.

GET ON IT

Victory Heat Rally is like those 90's racing games. Simple but with a difficulty spike towards the last few races. Having more goth girls would have made the game better. Hooters would not be going out of business if they had goth girls. An all goth Hooters is a multi million dollar idea. Would probably work for racing too.

Full disclosure: I backed this game on Kickstarter, so the tone is a lot more extreme than from an average player. Back in the day, this game advertised itself more explicitly as a Power Drift homage; sporting the same lovably janky graphics of a billion 2D-sprites zoomed in and out to create the illusion of a 3D track. But after the Kickstarter was done, they changed the graphics style to a more traditional 3D polygon-based style. I felt betrayed; 2D sprites dashing across your screen gave Power Drift a very rickety, almost wooden rollercoaster feel. This graphics switch nerfed that idiosyncrasy badly.

But don’t worry, the developers said. This change would allow them to create more interesting and varied tracks. And so I patiently waited.

And I got even more disappointed.

Victory Heat Rally, for all its arcade pretensions, loves to throw a ton of tutorials your way which are so pointless, some of them don’t even tell you which buttons to press. You also have to wade through a lot of generic interview cutscenes in an easy-ass campaign mode filled to the brim with filler, which you can’t skip because that’s the way to unlock more tracks.

When you finally do get behind the wheel, you might as well hold A. The game’s main control pitch is that you drift through corners, building up more mini-turbos the more you drift. Problem is, there is no risk versus reward mechanic; you’re not slowed down much if you hit a wall while drifting. Even after falling off course, you recover pretty quickly. Quite often I ended up in first place in lap two and had to race a formality of three more laps before I could finally finish.

The tracks themselves aren’t appealing, both gameplay-wise and presentation-wise. I have a hard time remembering tracks because they use the same “drift here and there” design, and the look of the tracks also blend together. The design of both the tracks as well as the entire look of the game is stuck in a grey-zone: it’s not minimalistic enough to lean into the unique look of old pseudo-3D games, but it also doesn’t use the broad possibility space of ‘real’ 3D to be creative and varied enough. It also doesn’t help that the game defaults to an ‘upscaled’ (read: bland) HD-resolution instead of the 240p pixel filter. To put it bluntly, there are probably mobile games which look and play better than this.

Victory Heat Rally is an anodyne, sleep-inducing experience, a pretender to the arcade revival throne. I can guarantee you a more challenging and engaging game in bloody Mario Kart.

Very fun game, fantastic art style, and addicting game play. Also great music

This games has some nice style and feels like a racing game from the late 90s/Early 2000s aesthetic. I love the music and design style of the entire world this takes place in. In short bursts of playing it can be quite fun.
That being said however the game does not feel like it took eight years to develop. There's some noticeable bugs and glitches abound. The art design on the vehicles look cute like a choro-Q car, but they have very few frames of animation. And a lot of the vehicle sprites are just slightly edited into other cars - which makes their whole presentation look very cheap. The tracks get a bit on the repetitive side and many of them don't have any real standout features. Gameplay is easy to pick up and play but there isn't any real depth to it all.
I do hope there'll be more updates to fix some of the games problems, but as it stands I wouldn't recommend this game at full price. Wait until it goes on sale.

TL;DR 6.7/10 (So close but just needed a little bit more)

Drivers are nothing but a different stat spread that you can tweak, maybe like.. a different spoiler? maybe a wing would be nice...

AI are a joke once you get to a certain point

Tracks are mainly done by location and then track, which is okay if they can give the tracks a set piece.. The only track I can remember is Veloci-dome and that's only because it had each road type on it

Player to Player interaction is non existent, it's just "They slipped up so you're in the lead now", I didn't earn my first places, it never felt like that cause there wasn't anyone on my ass threatening me.

The inclusion of local multiplayer is nice but why would I want to play this with others if there's no mechanics for us to abuse or use against one another.

However the Art style is positively LUSH and the Soundtrack I'm hoping to put in my playlist ASAP

Suggestion: Add something akin to shunting or pushing others as a mechanic, allow for tricks in the air to extend drift boost combos even further.. and maybe bump up the AI's speed a bit during the later stages...

The game is not bad! It's so close to good that it feels bad..