Stampede: Racing Royale Preview – Gearing up for Early Access with one last playtest

thesixthaxis.com:

Stampede: Racing Royale is hurtling toward release next month, with the Steam Early Access launch coming on 2nd November for PC. That means there’s just one last chance for Sumo and Secret Mode to squeeze in a final public playtest, and that’s exactly what they’ve decided to do this weekend – head to Steam to join in now. So what is Stampede: Racing Royale? Is it the Mario Kart battle royale that is sounds like?

There’s a lot of games that look to blend two or more genres together, these days, though the ‘but battle royale’ category has remained a particularly difficult nut to crack. Nintendo has probably done it best over the last few years, as they’ve blended the nostalgia bait of their classic NES and SNES games with player counts many times higher than four, but even they have shut games like Pac-Man 99 down after a period of time. For a new IP to stake out a spot in the live service arena is tricky at the best of times, but Stampede: Racing Royale’s core concept of battle royale kart racing certainly has legs… I mean, wheels.

At its heart, this is a solid kart racer that really isn’t trying to do anything too far being a well-rounded example of the genre. There’s an inherent familiarity with modern Mario Kart, Crash Team Racing and others, and the pick up and play nature of these games gives Stampede a bit of a leg up – a car jack up? – on other more keenly competitive battle royale genres like first person shooters.

Stampede ticks a lot of boxes for the kart racing gameplay. Alongside simple to grasp controls you have boost pads, items like missiles, shield and nitro, drifting (with a boost that builds up after a few seconds), slip streaming, and all the usual features that are pretty much always found in these games.