This week I am back on track with talking about Steam Nextfest demos that I forgot I had played. This week is a pretty dope racing game that is charming and competitive. I like equating it to Mario Kart because of how much fun I had with it during Nextfest. This week is Victory Heat Rally.

Victory Heat Rally is a retro-inspired racing game from Skydevilpalm and Playtonic Friends. The demo can still be downloaded on Steam, and has no release date.

Like any other racing game, the aim is to become the best.

Victory Heat Rally‘s Demo includes a series of tracks or “a tour” that the player can race through. Each track is quite unique with its own twists and turns and jumps that offer quite a hefty learning curve to each of the tracks. The learning curve really hits the fun mark when it is not a pain in the ass to restart the race because you were smoked by a computer bot. You start up the race, the camera swings like like its a plane, stops on your car and you launch in three, two, one. It’s fun every single time without it being a huge pain.

Victory Heat Rally plays like any other racing game with a focus on mastering the mid-turn drift, like Mario Kart. In Victory Heat Rally, there is a meter that shows you how much boost is being stored upon stopping the drift. Easy to understand, difficult to master. There is a tutorial right at the beginning that shows you the ropes but it is up to you to figure out how to play each race because each track is vastly different than the previous one.

It will be frequent, during each race, that the AI opponents will be ahead of the pack and you are the one trailing to place in the top three. Victory Heat Rally really makes it look like the player is traveling at high speeds as objects near the race track are flying by. Objects are hardly identifiable at times. It was a really good feeling in F Zero and it is still a good feeling in this game to travel super fast and you are moving fast all the time.

Driving and drifting controls are tight and reward playing for those risky plays.

Victory Heat Rally is a gorgeous-looking game. It invokes fond memories of playing cruisin’ USA with my brother at the arcade in the mall. All of the demo tracks have absolutely gorgeous backdrops when you can take your eyes off the tracks.

The music by RoBKTA and gwizofthestars is fantastic. The music is catchy enough and fits the stress and excitement that comes with racing.

I said that Victory Heat Rally was the best demo that I played during Steam Nextfest and I stand by that. The game is incredibly addictive. I played the demo for at least two hours before putting it down because I forced myself to play another demo before time was up on Nextfest. The racing is really fun, the difficulty is not frustrating, and the presentation of the game is great.

Most anticipated game, for sure.