Super Indie Karts

Super Indie Karts is a Kickstarter game that to be honest, just made it over the finishing line and while it has not had any updates in quite some time, me and a friend played it a ton over the weekend and had a blast! As the title suggests, this is an old school style kart racer, the kind of game that you would have played back on the Super Nintendo or perhaps even the Nintendo 64. They have the rights to a bunch of well known (or at the very least kind of known) indie game icons.

Who Is All Here?

As I write this, Super Indie Karts is still listed as being in early access, but from what I can tell, no big update has been released in quite some time. Anyway, as of me writing this, the game still has a stacked roster of over 30 characters from a whole bunch of game franchises. Burrito Bison, Mutant Mudds, Runbow, 2064, Canabalt, Duck Game, ToeJam & Earl, Freedom Planet, and Clive n Wrench are just a few of the franchises. For me personally, ToeJam & Earl being in this game blew my mind as I had no idea they were classed as an “indie” game these days. It is a solid roster of games to have characters from and base tracks on.

Keeping Your Hands On The Wheel

As a retro inspired kart racer, Super Indie Karts has all the game modes that you would expect from a game like this. You can take part in the Grand Prix mode where you race through a series of cups, there are a whole bunch of cups and it is going to take you quite a while to play through them all, that is for sure. You can do this in single-player or against a friend, the classic split screen co-op takes me back to my Saturday nights when my friends and I would play Mario Kart 64 after we watched WCW Saturday Night wrestling. You also have your time trials as well to hone your skills. Plus, we cannot forget about the battle mode For a kart racer, there is more than enough to keep you busy here.

Playing With Bits

One of the things that I got a huge kick out of with Super Indie Karts was the whole presentation of the game. You can play the game in 16-bit flat super style or 64 low poly ultra styles, I thought that was awesome and there are so many neat retro features, or as the game calls them “authentic 90s hardware limitations” giving you stuff like poor draw distance and other such things. The game looks fantastic and I had a blast playing with the different options like a buggy CTR filter. The game takes characters from many different game franchises, but it has a very universal look, making them all work for this game. Honestly, I just love what the developer has done here as far as the presentation goes. They truly get what made these iconic 16 and 64-bit kart racing games so special.

You Cannot Put A Price On Fun!

Gameplay wise, Super Indie Karts if I am being honest is a pretty straightforward kart racing game. It controls well enough and the races are fast and frantic and while they have tried to make this as retro as can be, they have made it so some of the more frustrating aspects of these retro kart racers like rubber banding AI are not a thing here. There are many characters to choose from, but they all pretty much race the same. Speaking of which, the handling is great and I liked the way the drifting/boost system in the game worked.

Pros:

• There is a great collection of game franchises here
• The roster is truly stacked
• The core racing gameplay is fun, but it does have an element of skill.
• This is so much fun in pretty much every regard

Cons:

• From what I can tell, no updates have been made in quite some time
• The kart racers do not really seem different to each other, apart from looks