Top down racing for 1-4 players using tiny cars and boats around household rooms and garden ponds? You’d be forgiven to jump immediately to Micro Machines – I would do the same – but other alternatives come out every few months. Mini Micro Racing is a budget racer inspired by the classic series that I picked up in the Steam Winter Sale and I must admit, it surpassed my expectations.
There isn’t a straight-up race mode in Mini Micro Racing. Instead, its three event types follow the Micro Machine multiplayer tradition of trying to eliminate your opponents by forcing them off the screen. This can be by outracing them so they fall too far behind and lose touch with you, forcing your opponent into a mistake that sees them fall off the screen, or by reducing their health by firing weapons at them. All three ways are viable depending on how skilled your opponents are, and the last player standing wins 3 points, descending down to nothing for the first player eliminated. This continues until a player reaches 10 points, or stretches the furthest beyond it in a tie. This can mean matches can last a minute or extend into frantic and tense battles that last much longer if everyone is super skilled.
Standard battle races involve lightning bolt pickups as weapons. The weapons range from electrical shocks that can hit multiple cars next to you, to a giant delayed launch firework that can instakill an opponent. Some lock on but the more powerful ones don’t, so it requires skill to pull off a deadly shot. That makes it all the more satisfying when you manage it whilst keeping Mini Micro Racing from descending into a weapons fest. Racing matters first and foremost and thankfully the pointy, grippy and responsive handling makes it a breeze to pick up and understand. Cars and boats handle identically and there is no terrain grip variation either, and whilst this ultimately is a drawback, it does make the game very approachable.
The other two event modes are well worth playing too. One is a mine race, littering the track with mines to avoid. It doesn’t pay to be too aggressive and close to the screen edge as you’ll catch too many mines and explode. You also don’t want to be too far back either because one wrong move will knock you out. The other mode has all players on a constant 5-second countdown before being electric-shocked and losing health. Dotted around the track are clock pickups which reset the 5-second timer but there is only one every corner or two, so it is a furious race to grab it or knock your opponent out of the way. Bashing opponents is a handy tactic in mine mode too if you are feeling evil.
One thing I would recommend is doing the career mode first, either in single-player or multiplayer. It is here where the 13 tracks, 20 character avatars, and 27 vehicle shapes are unlocked to add more variety to the mix. Then you can pick what tracks and modes you want to play in single events afterwards. There are no time trial modes, which felt like an odd omission especially as there is no pure race mode either. My only other criticism is that the music loops are very short and uninteresting to listen to so crank your own soundtrack and just yell at your mates instead.
For its price point, there is plenty of fun and action to be had in Mini Micro Racing. The game plays so smoothly and easily in a way that so many other arcade racers don’t often understand. I liked the nods to the original Micro Machines in some of the track designs and characters (hello Cherry) but it also does its own thing with its unique additional modes too. For a couple of pounds, you could do far, far worse than picking up this little gem.
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