Earlier this year, I discovered Tiny Truck Racing, a free retro arcade racing game. It was so polished and easy to play, it got me excited for what an expanded version could feel like. Tiny Racing is that expansion. It takes the single truck car, adds a drifter and a formula car, and expands the track roster to 18. All the polish remains for a tidy, tiny racer.
Evoking early 90s isometric styled racers like Ivan Ironman Offroad, and RC Grand Prix – the isometric view of driving up and down a track that spans several screens will be familiar to anyone over 30 who was a gamer as a kid. I’m reminded of Super Sprint but with bigger tracks and fuzzy pixel art that feels inviting and charming. Handling-wise, all three vehicles are grippy, but run at different top speeds. They turn sharply, emulating ’90s arcade racers. You can use a d-pad or keyboard to steer like an on/off switch. They all have slightly different points when they break into a wider, circular drift. Tiny Racing’s tracks have a lot of chicanes to straightline and 90-degree bends, and the standard turn will work for those. The tighter hairpins and roundabouts will require a bit of easing off the gas with a drift to get around. You can still floor it and get round these corners, but you’ll need to stay wide and not hug the apex to make it work.
That’s as far as complexity goes in Tiny Racing, for better and for worse. This makes racing easy to pick up, but with a ceiling of depth to reach before you realise you can win everything in single player very easily. The 18 tracks are locked behind a 12-round tournament that acts like a championship. Choose your race length and off you go. Time trial helpfully puts your fastest ghost car to hotlap with. Local multiplayer allows 2-4 player split screen, and the fact that Tiny Racing halves or quarters the screen is a great touch. You can opt for AI to fill the other slots and have those in windows, too. It is buttery smooth, but you’ll only want it in small doses because you’ll run out of steam after 15-20 minutes per session. That said, I think it’s a game I can whip out on rotation for that short burst of energy repeatedly and not get bored.
The small scope of Tiny Racing brings up only a couple of minor niggles. If you drive offline, you’ll slow down, but in the city tracks where pavement lines the road, sometimes you slow down and other times you don’t. I’d prefer consistency, as within a few laps, I was exploring off the track to find ways to cut the track and gain an advantage. The AI has four difficulties, and the game’s default is adaptive. This means rubberbanding the AI in a way that, at times, felt a bit odd. As soon as they pass you, their top speed drops to slower than yours. Once behind, they can then go faster. This meant that unless I crashed into a wall or bridge pillar on the last lap, I’d win every race on that difficulty. Switch to hard if you want a better challenge, but even then, I found myself winning all the time.
Tiny Racing is a fun, pint-sized arcade retro throwback. Clocking in at 16mb, its tightly compact code is as small as its namesake. Enjoy this in small doses, with friends, and you’ll find a fun and breezy retro racing staple in your collection. it is polished and instantly playable, making it a great addition to family game night.
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