Trailer

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The game

Set the field to 16 and they all fit on the line. You have three rockets, three charges of nitro and two things to leave lying behind you – and so has the car in front. Rennspiel is a top-down racer that takes after the 16-bit ones: the whole corner on one screen, a field close enough to touch, and nothing in it that will apologise.

• Race dirty

  • Rockets go forward. A mine or a slick of oil goes out the back – the garage decides which one you are carrying.
  • Oil lies on the road for three laps. The corner that was clean on lap one is a trap on lap two.
  • Sit in another car's tow and half your drag is gone: eight per cent over your own top speed.
  • A car that is written off goes up on the spot, and the wreck lies where it died until it comes back.

• The track keeps the receipts

  • Rubber where somebody was sideways, smears behind whoever went through the oil, ruts in the sand, scratches on the ice, scorch where a rocket went off. Rain washes the road clean again in a couple of laps.
  • Trains, level crossings, barriers, jumps, bridges and tunnels – the trains and the barriers run on the race clock alone.
  • Every track brings its own sky: the harbour in the rain, the old town at night, the ice pass at dusk.

• Eight championships

  • Eight cups of four races, fields of 8 to 12, prize money and points.
  • A shop between the races: engine, tyres, armour, nitro, launcher, ammunition, rear weapon, repairs. Damage and ammunition carry over into the next race.
  • Four difficulty levels, and inside them every driver has their own skill and their own temper.

• 2 to 4 players, one screen

  • Press A on the pad you mean to drive with, or the accelerator of a free block of keys, and you are sitting down. Four pads, four blocks on the one keyboard, or any mix of the two.
  • Two race in columns, three or four take a quarter each – and with three, the track map moves into the fourth quarter.
  • A party can drive a whole championship this way, points counted seat by seat.

• LAN, and online over Steam

  • On a LAN the lobby finds the open rooms by itself. Host from inside the game, or run a dedicated server.
  • Online, the same race against anybody, anywhere: rooms found through Steam's matchmaking, friends invited straight out of the lobby.
  • The grid holds 16 either way, and every place nobody takes is filled by the AI.

• 24 tracks, and then yours

  • The editor draws the road as a graph, paints tiles over it, drops in jumps, oil, barriers and railway lines – and takes the whole thing for a drive before you have saved it once.
  • A track you save turns up in the single player menu and in the lobby straight away; a track the host drew arrives over the wire while the lobby is open.
  • Every track keeps a record board, and Steam keeps the world ranking.

Screenshots

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Facts

Title

Rennspiel

Developer and publisher

Schikane (Sebastian Rexhausen)

Genre

Top-down arcade combat racer

Platforms

Windows, Linux, Steam Deck

Players

1 solo, 2 to 4 on one screen, up to 16 on a LAN and online

Tracks

24 tracks in 8 cups, plus the editor for your own

Languages

English, German

Controls

Keyboard or gamepad, every menu reachable with the pad alone

Steam

35 achievements, Steam Cloud, world ranking, friend invites

Engine

Godot 4

Release

Coming soon to Steam

Press: every picture on this page may be used in coverage of the game; clicking one opens it at 1920×1080. Further material and review builds on request, see contact.

Contact

Questions, press enquiries, bug reports: send an e-mail to rqe7njn9svp5imeplx@4s2ekbzrweqx7.jd9e. The button opens your mail program with a message already filled in, leaving only your details to add.