World of Speed takes the realism of racing games and brings the team-based multiplayer experience to the PC as a free-to-play MMO game. Slightly Mad Studios, a developer with racing pedigree, is behind the effort. Realism seems to be the key here as players will have a harder time using arcade-y racing tactics and the tracks themselves are painstakingly recreated from their real life counterparts.
World of Speed
Developer: Slightly Mad Studios
Publisher: My.com
Platform: PC
Release Date: 2014
Russian publisher My.com, a subsidiary of the Russian mail client Mail.ru, is backing the Slightly Mad Studios venture with serious funding in the hopes that it will achieve critical acclaim. From our hands-on meeting at GDC, we played two rounds of 2v2 of the newly revealed San Francisco track detailed in the screenshots below. Expect a lot of 90 degree turns here. While my time with World of Speed was brief, my ultimate take away is that this is most certainly accessible to newcomers and racing enthusiasts alike.
The level of detail found in the track is evident and the controls are tight, maybe a little too stiff, as cornering and braking can take some getting used to in contrast to the recent racing games out on the market. Races play out in a scoring based fashion with team objectives to beat. Drivers earn experience points through “micro actions” (drifting, finding shortcuts, slipstreaming) along the way which is used to measure progress in World of Speed. You don’t have to necessarily have to come in first place in a race to win the overall team score.
Cooperative team based social play appears to the direction World of Speed is heading as players can join and form Clubs and compete against rival teams in various modes like Territory Wars, where Clubs fight for control of an in-game location. The idea behind it is to own the track that once accomplished, every racer who uses the track can see the winner’s club name and logo. Clubs also have access to a Garage which acts as the social hangout for World of Speed players.
In true MMO fashion, Slightly Mad Studios promises constant updates to continually improve World of Speed through new cars, tracks, gameplay modes, etc. A preview of the upcoming modes titles: Cat and Mouse, Freeway Pursuit, Destruction Derby makes it apparent that there is a lot more in the works. While it is still in pre-alpha build state, World of Speed is shaping up to hit the sweet spot between casual and competitive racing games. As a downloadable free-to-play PC title, there is certainly a lowered bar for accessibility and we are hoping that translates to quality playtime when it releases later this year.
