Stampede Racing Royale launches for free with a Dave the Diver collab

thesixthaxis.com:

Battle Royale karting game Stampede Racing Royale has burst into a full free-to-play launch on PC via Steam with a Dave the Diver – should that be Dave the Driver? – collaboration to celebrate the release.

The pitch for Stampede Racing Royale is pretty simple: it’s Mario Kart, but a battle royale. 60 players will join the starting lobby and then race through three rounds, first to avoid the cut and then to race for the win in the final round.

The game on Steam is skipping past the Early Access branding, but it’s a counterpart to the Xbox Game Preview version available on consoles and the Microsoft Store on PC, which is keeping the Game Preview label. There will also be the biggest update yet for the Game Preview build, with new content, features and community-driven changes.

There’s six new tracks, six new karts (plus one Dave the Diver kart), and more than 250 new customisation items. They’ve added a new ‘Wrapid’ special event to unlock an exclusive kart wrap, and there’s a reward for logging in for 7 days straight.

For the moment-to-moment racing, a new boost system has been implemented to accumulate boost via drifting, airtime and just passively, with players able to deploy it themselves. A new Jelly Block power-up will drop gelatinous cubes on the track to slow and blur the vision of anyone that runs into it. Add some new round modifiers, like Hard Mode, where players can be instantly eliminated by running into hazards, and there’s plenty of scope for added variety.

In a curious move, the game is going far beyond just being free-to-play. Sumo Leamington want to built a bustling community first, and so have completely removed in-app purchases from the game. They’re also gifting all racers 3,000 Star Chips – the in-game currency – which is enough to unlock all of the cosmetic content.

It’s a bold move, but alongside the Dave the Diver collab, it should hopefully help gain the game a good bit of attention. Season 0 will extend through to early 2025, with Sumo looking to