Honestly, given Rocket League’s prodigious success, it’s a surprise more games haven’t attempted to follow in its car tracks. Announced this week, Turbo Golf Racing looks to change that. It’s a multiplayer game about driving a car into a ball, but as the name suggests it’s drawing inspiration from those ruined good walks rather than from football.
Here’s the announcement trailer, released earlier this week:
That does look a lot like Rocket League, even down to its cars and futuristic world design. But okay.
The key difference is that this is an actual race, rather than a scored back-and-forth in a confined arena. The golf course you’re competing on is a race course and you’re rushing to be the first of eight players to get your ball in the hole. In the trailer above, that looks exciting, but I wonder: when you miss your ball and drive past, do you have to reverse and try again or can you reset behind the ball as you would if you crashed off track in a regular racing game? Rocket League’s match and arena structure means it’s not frustrating should you ever miss the ball entirely – and you will – but I worry that won’t be the case in the high pressure of a race.
Turbo Golf Racing will also allow you to activate wings on any vehicle and glide towards the finish line, and there are “power cores” to unlock which grant you special abilities. Some of those seem to let you go on the offensive against your rivals, similar to the rocket attack shown in the trailer above.
We covered developer Hugecalf’s previous game when it entered early access and was called Carried Away, although by the time it left early access it was called When Ski Lifts Go Wrong. It was a bridge construction game, but you were delivering physicsy skiers to their destination rather than physicsy vehicles.
Turbo Golf Racing will also launch in early access later this year on Steam and Game Pass. Before that, there will be a beta running sometime this spring, which you can sign up for here.