Grade: B
A top down futuristic racing game still in early release
Vektor 2089 was a top-down retro racing game. You have an acceleration button, brake button, boost button, and then you pointed your little triangularly shaped anti-grav rocket ship around the track. Overall, it harkened back to Sega Genesis or SNES-style graphics.
The game had a few modes, even in early release. For example, you could do a championship, a single track, play local multi-player, or time trials. In addition, the AI racers had a variety of difficulty settings you could change to ramp up the hardness.
Racing strategies
The racing strategies weren’t too complicated, but there were a few ways I used to win against the AI.
- Be careful not to overuse your boost and blow your engine
- Boost coming out of a turn or at opportune times to blow past the competition
- Use the turns to lay off the acceleration and recharge your boost
- Watch the railings and top right corner for hints about upcoming turns
Every time you hit a wall or another car, glitch graphics flash across the screen. This can be distracting and gets a bit annoying, but you’re able to turn it off in the settings thankfully.
Made with a custom framework created by the dev
Impbox made Vektor 2089 with a programming language, Nim, that I’ve never heard of. In Nim, Impbox created their own custom Pico-8 inspired framework called Nico. This framework, Nico, looks like a labor of love by the game dev. It has functions in the framework for system, controller inputs, audio, and graphics. It’s impressive that this game author decided to write their own gaming framework for their construction instead of using one of the many that already exist out there. I appreciate that they open-sourced their framework so that anyone could pick it up and mess around with it.
Using modern programming techniques for retro design is an interesting concept. It reminds me of stories I’ve read of sound engineers who use AI to add ultra-realistic hisses and pops to make an audio track sound like it’s straight from a record.
Want to see more? Explore all itch.io bundle for racial equality and justice game reviews.