I was racing across an alien world, just a few seconds away from crossing the finish line, when I lost traction and hit a large hill at a strange angle. No worries, though; I could just use my thrusters to reorient my intergalactic dune buggy to save me from a nasty crash. It was at that moment that I realized I had used up the last bit of my thruster fuel. I smashed hard into the ground and had to restart. Next time, I’ll be a bit more careful.
And there will be a next time because I really enjoy Exo Rally Championship, a tough but exciting rally sim that ditches the forests of Europe and the dunes of California for faraway locations on distant moons and planets.
Released earlier this week on Steam, Exo Rally Championship is from the creator behind Exo One. But where that game was a somewhat relaxing intergalactic flight through alien worlds, XRC is a white-knuckle racing game all about reaching the finish line as fast as possible while avoiding crashing meteors, massive cliffs, and hostile terrain. As the kids might say, the vibes are different. But I’ve been having a blast racing through the game’s various intergalactic tracks while customizing (and repairing) my space buggy and slowly getting better at not landing upside down.
And make no mistake about it: You will crash a lot in Exo Rally Championship. While the game looks very sci-fi, the inner workings of it are a tough-as-nails and highly accurate rally simulator. You have to manage fuel weight, tire quality, repairs, your vehicle’s ride height, and many other settings. The game does let you mostly ignore the real nitty-gritty settings, but you’ll need to get your hands dirty between time trials across the galaxy to ensure you have plenty of fuel and working tires that are suited for the planet you’re driving across next.
Fuel plays a big part in Exo Rally Championship, as you use it to activate your various thrusters which is done using the right stick. So, for instance, if you hit a jump too fast while trying to fly through one of the checkpoints along your route, you can use the right stick to activate your front thrusters to lift your nose back up and hopefully land mostly flat. Perhaps you bounce off some small dunes more than expected and start flipping right. You can use your thrusters to counteract that motion and avoid flipping over. But use your thrusters too much, and you’ll be out of fuel. And you can’t restock between some trials, meaning you have to be very smart and careful about how risky you drive.
The end result is that Exo Rally Championship is a challenging but super-satisfying rally racer that looks and plays unlike most other racing games, thanks to its sci-fi setting and gravity-defying thrusters. Just be careful. That hill might not look very big, but the drop on the other side is a doozy.