Test Driven: ASUKA x Redline Reverie, Steam Demo

Welcome to Test Driven, a look at previews, demos, and unfinished builds of racing games new, and old. It's the amuse-bouche to understand what the chef is going to serve you when it comes to the full meal, and a deeper dive into history if it calls for it. It can be a demo found on a disc in a magazine, an official press preview, or tucked away in a full release to show off what else the publisher has on offer.

And if you are developing a game and want me to try and then write about it, you can always drop me a line.

This edition of Test Driven looks at the Steam demo for ASUKA x Redline Reverie.

There is always something about the inevitable come-down in the draining of a mind once filled with angst and frustration. I was in a funk, trying to reset the energy in my mind in the wake of the racing game erasure a Aftermath co-founder committed. I said my piece, and left it at that though there will always be lingering energy in that vacuum. That lingering energy brings other thoughts to the forefront, including that I should practice what I preach; that I should branch out more and see what's out there and support the racing game genre we actually have. Even in this moment, I still had to put more time in Gran Turismo 7.

The Streak had to stay alive after all.

I come back from finishing the time trial at Brands Hatch in a Toyota GR Corolla and am greeted by a white, with pink and black striped sports coupe with a massive front splitter and rear wing. I can feel the heat emanating from under the hood and the hum of a turbocharged inline-6 idling well above 600 rpm. The passenger side window lowers and a voice snaps me to attention, "Hey! Are you getting in or not?"

The timing for the ASUKA x Redline Reverie demo on Steam couldn't have come at a better time for me. So, what do we got?

Much like the demo for Heatwarped, the demo for ASUKA x Redline Reverie functions as a taster of how the core campaign is going to be. It's a racing game with it's single player progression following the classic game flow of visual novels or the Persona franchise, using a day and night cycle that has specific events only active on certain days of the week or during the day or after hours. You can't go into the workshop at night, but you can do head to head races against your rivals on the mountain roads at that time. Certain days will have challenges to pass for the girls racing academy that the titular character Asuka is going to, while being free to go into the mountains at your leisure on days when you don't. Buying parts in the online store will have different delivery times depending on when you order them, unless you pay extra to get them overnighted to your door.

The thing is, I'm a cis-gendered white boy; so far removed from the weight and the reverence of the genre that grew to become a titan of gaming in Japan through the 1990s. Visual Novels have been instrumental in pushing narrative and storytelling forward in the world of video games, as well as normalizing the idea that there should be emotional and romantic depth in the relationships between characters in video games. My main genre of gaming choice is so far removed from all that, but there's never been a better time to try and inject some life into a genre that feels increasingly gentrified by it's mainstream offerings and follow what the likes of JDM: Japanese Drift Master and Screamer have started. Maybe the way JDM went across having it's sex scene that has since been patched out was a little ham-handed; though someone had to do it to get the ball rolling right? And maybe down the road ASUKA x Redline Reverie will have more on offer in terms of it's characters and it's story that a demo was simply never going to delve into.

The point of all this is to say, racing game players need a bit more hand-holding before fully getting into the swing of things of a gameplay flow and structure that can absolutely work in the genre. The expectations of what I'm suppose to do on a day by day basis are unclear, how much I'm suppose to be progressing forward in terms of car development, finances and the overall campaign and there isn't a calendar in-game to say when events are going on. The events are all buried in the e-mail screen on your laptop, when a basic objective of what to do next would be ideal to accompany the e-mail feed. I would figure it out and get into a groove of going to the workshop, going to Mount Haruna or doing a special event in the day, then back to Mount Haruna at night, and then repeating while buying and upgrading my little roadster in between. There's a lot of menus to navigate, and it's easy to get lost or even not know things that you do need to know for certain events. I would imagine most people would miss out on changing to the drift compound tires before the first ice drift challenge through no fault of their own. But for a demo, I just need that little bit more direction.

The visual novel portion is only one half of the game: because it's time to get on track.

The demo to ASUKA x Redline Reverie also comes with a bonus time trial using a modified version of the roadster you can buy at the start of the campaign, and it serves as a good spot to understand the driving dynamics and get your control settings dialed. There's a big challenge in play here for the two person development team: namely trying to make a racing game drive in a rational manner in an off the shelf game engine, in this cause Unity. Unity is a great place for the game's cel-shaded, cartoony visual style to thrive but making it work with the constant load that a automotive physics model requires, making it cohesive and drive good to the player is always a challenge. It was a challenge with Assetto Corsa Competizione in it's injection of Kunos's physics data into Unreal Engine 4 in terms of translating that model to the player in a game that was now fully expected to work on gamepad. The controller filtering options in ACC were incomplete, but are incredibly robust here and with quality tool-tips to dial in the settings to suit.

The overall feel of the driving dynamics after dialing in the filtering is positive, but still needs more time in the lab. My big issue is the lack of positive feedback from the brakes on initial application, even if the actual brake strength has improved over a couple patches since the demo's initial launch. It's a similar sensation to braking in the modern Codemasters F1 games, perpetually feeling like you're braking too late with initial braking application feeling numb before regaining feeling at the end of the braking phase. Powering out of the corner on the grip tires is good, though the drift tires don't grip back up on exit of the slide smoothly. After those initial laps in the time trial felt like playing rFactor on gamepad with how jerky it was on initial turning input, proper filtering and the suggested settings went a long way.

There is something here in the grip driving with the early cars and few upgrades; ASUKA x Redline Reverie understands the sensation of driving a slow car fast very well. The triple hairpins that double back on each other on Mount Haruna feel like you're going way too fast for them even at 40 kilometers per hour in a late 90s French hatchback, but that's how spirited driving is in the real world. It's that feeling of oh shit this is fast even at modest speeds that shows that the Mo and Ju of MoJu Studios are in alignment with the experience they want to make and translating to the player, or at least to me in this case. It is just a matter of how will it continue to translate in more powerful cars that won't be able to fully stretch their legs on such narrow roads, and if the symbiosis that the upgrade model is wanting to emphasize can keep up. The dyno scene showing how it all works and the robust tuning options in such a package will be a lot of fun to experiment with when it comes to the mid and the late game.

I needed a trip to the Japanese mountains after the last week, far away from the hustle and bustle of what dominates the mainstream racing game landscape. I needed humble, but full of life and knows where it's wanting to go. I needed the virtual act of driving to evoke the same joy that I have traversing The Renfrew Loop here on Vancouver Island.

Racing games can and should be more than just that at the same time, and evoking visual novels new and old is certainly a good way to start. I do need a calendar though, and a race countdown timer too.

You can download the demo for ASUKA x Redline Reverie and wishlist the game on Steam. A full release will come when it's ready.