Welcome to my review of the retro-inspired racer, Slipstream. This game is brought to us by the one-man-band developer Ansdor (Ultra Type-R, Meow Sushi Night) and publishers Blitworks (Ports of Sonic CD and Jet Set Radio). It is a casual racing game inspired by retro games such as Outrun.
For the purpose of my review, I played the PlayStation 4 version of the game. It is available to play on PC via Steam, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4 (plays on PS5 also), and Xbox One (Plays on Series consoles also).
A Fantastic Throwback
How will Slipstream play out for me? Should I have left all the love for retro games in the past? Continue reading to find out. You can also check out our previous reviews.
The Game
Slipstream, as mentioned, is a retro-inspired racing game that will throw you back to all sorts of memories if you’re around the same age (or older) as me. It must be noted that when you first fire up Slipstream, it does give you health warnings.
It warns of rapidly flashing images that may induce seizures in those who have photosensitive epilepsy. The game also has a load of other settings that can be enabled or disabled to your liking. These settings are screen tilt, screen shake, video effects, and VHS effect.
It has a fair few game modes for players to experience. Initially you choose from single player or multiplayer, multiplayer is a local split-screen mode. Inside of those is more options including Grand Prix, Single Race, Cannonball, and Battle Royale. Single player also contains the Grand Tour and Time Trial modes. Grand Tour mode is effectively the story mode.
We have a choice of five cars, which are mostly inspired by Japanese classics. Such cars are the Type23 (Nissan 300ZX), Lynx (Honda NSX), and the Aurora (Mitsubishi 3000GT). The other two I’m not too sure what cars they’re inspired by but I believe the Epsilon looks like a Lancia Delta Integrale, but I could be wrong. Each car has its own spec which gives you different top speeds, acceleration, and handling.
Of course, it is a racing game. Therefore you must beat your opponents to the finish line and be in first place. During the Grand Tour mode, the opponents are not your only target though. You also have to ensure you cross that finish line and progress to the next route before the time expires.
The game plays very well and gives you some real fun times drifting around the tracks whilst chasing down your opponents. Of course, there is also the titular feature in the game where you keep behind other cars to then “slipstream” passed them.
Look & Sound
The graphics are self-explanatory really. They’re 16-bit inspired from days of old, with ultra-bright textures and classic car designs. I personally love everything about the graphics in Slipstream, Ansdor has done a great job with the custom game engine bringing 2D sprite-scaling graphics to the modern era.
The audio is pure class. Definitely threw me back to memories of playing Outrun and similar games, such as Road Rash.
The game does run very well and I did not experience any graphical or audio bugs/glitches.
Length & Replayability
The game has lots of features and options to play through, as mentioned above. It’ll keep you going for a good 20+ hours at least. Of course, you can just keep playing the game if you so wish to do that.
Slipstream also has 24 trophies to unlock, including the platinum trophy.
Conclusions
Slipstream is a very fun game and I had a blast playing it. If you remember the days of games such as Outrun then I highly recommend you pick it up. It is a very well-made game with zero issues.
Should you wish to find out more about the game, you can check it out over at the Blitworks site. I give Slipstream a score of 8/10.
A code was kindly provided for us to review this.
