What if your kart racing games from the 8-bit and 16-bit era took place on one giant open-world island? That’s the premise of indie racer Go Kart Island, a single-player racing game that nails so much of what makes a retro kart racing game so much fun. There are some unusual design decisions which prevent it from being an absolute recommendation for all racers, but if you are nostalgic for the early to mid-90s kart racer, then this is for you.
The only way to unlock all Go Kart Island has to offer is in story mode. Here, you’ll play as one of up to 32 unlockable characters, mostly animals, that all handle identically. You’ll be presented with a story about building up a reputation and a bank balance large enough to enter the big island race, and the way you’ll earn cash is by competing and winning in lots of other events dotted around the island. You have complete freedom to explore the entire island from the start, and the free drive between locations is a great way to get your bearings and understand Go Kart Island’s driving model.
The kart isn’t hugely fast in a straight line, and its turning circle is competent and approachable. The key is the drift turn, which has a tiny hop to it before almost perfectly matching the 180 hairpins placed everywhere around the island. Where I live in Essex in the UK, everywhere is a roundabout. Well, on Go Kart Island, the principle is why go in a straight line if you can double-back hairpin it instead! Thankfully, this will make traversal more interesting and events more engaging. The handling is smooth, predictable, repeatable, and incredibly satisfying because the kart’s drifting angle matches the turns every time. More kart racers should look at what Go Kart Island has done and take notes.
Once you meet a character, after a brief conversation, the event will start. Some are pure races around small sections of the island, whilst others will have weapons like missiles and bombs. I preferred the pure races because I found that too many of the weapons were homing weapons with no way to escape them. Once in the lead, be prepared to get pummelled. One of Go Kart Island’s strengths is the variety of event types. Some are chases, others require you to ram a getaway vehicle until it blows up, then there are collectable hunts, time trials, escapes from groups of cars ramming you into extinction, and even some stealth follow-the-car events where you need to stay a certain distance away from a car but not too far so that you lose them. There are some special events, too, along with overworld map collectables to sign and signs to smash through. You are never far from the next thing to do, and the story snippets are short and snappy. They’re also quite humorous. One of those stealth sequences I mentioned is a wife thinking her husband is cheating on her. Later on, you’ll have someone in labour and needing to get to the hospital fast. These characters are all unlockable, making it all the more fun to play through.
As events are cleared, you can then play them outside of story mode in a separate menu, and here’s where I found Go Kart Island’s design went a bit askew. Whilst I completely understand why the open world story mode would be single player only, the fact that time trials or races picked from a standalone menu do not include local multiplayer seems like an own goal. Go Kart Island is perfect for local multiplayer racing, and I don’t understand why it’s completely missing from the game. If you can clear the missions in story mode, you are probably getting a gold or silver medal straight away in the standalone event mode, which limits the longevity of the game overall. Local multiplayer could have extended that into infinity. The other minor quibble I have is that whenever there is a point-to-point event, the game refuses to let you pick your route and instead forces you down set roads, with timed hazards to make it feel a bit like a stunt driving mission. This is fine, but it means that you never get to enjoy the open world map inside an actual event. You’ll only get to drive around it like a hub.
These missed opportunities are why Go Kart Island scores slightly lower than I’d have hoped to score it. You’ll be able to clear all the events in under 2 hours, and it’s the longevity due to a lack of local multiplayer that drags the score down most. If that doesn’t bother you, and you love arcade racers from the Mega Drive and SNES era, then this is a must-buy.
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