Slot car racing is always nostalgic to me, as my older brother had a set that was passed down to me as a child. It formed some of my first racing memories, and so I like to find slot car racing video games that evoke that nostalgia. Speed Rivals is a promising title in early access that can bring 1-4 players together for slot car racing craziness. It intrigued me because it follows the LittleBigPlanet Karting and Mod Nation Racers approach of Create, Share, Play. The level editor and Steam Workshop are baked into the fabric of Speed Rivals, making it a game that will only mature and improve with age.
The game comes with over 100 cars to unlock, and you can repaint them and add on some decals for customisation. There is a selection of tracks in the game that broadly fall into three categories: real-world (unlicensed) circuits, fictional racing tracks, and stunt tracks. The latter has loops and crossovers that take advantage of slot car racing’s unique setup. Each track will have either 2, 3, or 4 lanes for that number of cars, and some tracks have the ability switch this option up depending on how it was built. Races can be one-lap sprints, up to 100-lap marathons. It is all up to you.
Once in a race, the controls are simple. You use the bumper buttons to switch up and down different speed settings (gears) for your slot car. Some corners may allow you to take it at a higher gear if you are on the outside lane, whereas the tighter inside line may need you to drop a gear or two. Kinks are particularly tricky to decipher in Speed Rivals because the flicky nature of it may cause you to fly off the course. You’ll fly off track often, and when you do, you’ll need to button mash to replace your car back on the track as quickly as possible. There is far more nuance to the grip physics in this game than you’d initially expect, and that’s because of how nuanced the curve or camber of each section of track can be. Sometimes, slower and steadier will win the race, as you lose a good 3-7 seconds per crash. If you want to test the absolute limit, there’s a great online leaderboard time trial mode to flex your skills with. Outside of that, the single-player experience revolves around completing championships of races against AI and having your total race time determine your final position. Again, online leaderboards give extra incentive for replayability here, too.
The core racing is solid. I appreciate how varied the tracks and car designs are, but my appreciation for what Speed Rivals can do only increased when I started playing with the track editor. The track editor in Speed Rivals is incredibly easy to use, but also incredibly powerful. You place each track section on your starting table, select if it’s a straight or a curve, or even a track piece that crosses over the slot car lanes. Each track piece can have its length, height, radius, and camber adjusted so you can create a huge variety of challenges. Want switchback hairpins? Sure! Want a spiralling, never-ending corner that flips out into a wall of death and then a loop-de-loop? Go for it! You can hang bits of the track off the table for dramatic elevation changes, too. If you find that you are struggling to neatly complete your track (it must be a complete loop), the auto-complete option can help. Once you’ve validated the lap, you can name it and pop it onto the Steam Workshop for others to download for racing or hotlaps.
The track editor is the real gem of Speed Rivals. I’ve been having a go at recreating real circuits and trying out some whacky designs. It is quick, easy, and structured in a way that can help you add character-building nuances in your track design. My only critique at the moment is that Speed Rivals adopts various camera settings to view the racing, but sometimes none of them give you a clear view of the action. When you have a busy track, where parts of the track go behind others, or loop close by, Speed Rivals struggles. The start/finish camera will be blocked from view. The helicopter cam doesn’t nicely peer through foreground scenery and shows a massive piece of track or a tree instead of the action. There is an onboard camera, but I found that quite disorientating and more of a novelty than usable. Trying to flick between all these on the fly is not ideal, and I feel a view from a higher standing point would be a beneficial addition.
All the seeds are here for Speed Rivals to be an inventive racer. The racing itself is solid, and the track editor is spectacular. I hope a community gets behind the game and elevates it to the cult classic I think it has the potential to be. If it can solve the camera issue, then Speed Rivals could be a definitive slot car racer. Very enjoyable – expect this score to increase once out of early access.
[Review as of January 2026]
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