The premise of PENNY RACERS is simple: race your car the best you can and be among the top three to reach the checkered flag. To achieve this objective, you must avoid missiles launched by your competitors, among other things. One way to counter this is the barrel roll maneuver, which is a quick and effective way to avoid unexpected hurdles on the tracks. In the beginning, you drive a pretty unimpressive racer. However, if you beat the competition and place in the top three, your reward is the chance to upgrade your car. Be merciless and steal the losing racers' special features, such as engine and armor upgrades, special attack abilities, and enhancing cosmetic features for the car. You have 13 different racer body styles and nine tracks to choose from. The cartoony racers zip through city streets, ice caves, and a volcano, and with the Track Create mode, you can design the wildest track you can imagine. When you toss four-player racing into the fray, the fun quadruples as the action intensifies and the losers are utterly humiliated.
Also in series
Reviews View More
The customisation and upgrades are a key part of Penny Racers. There’s a lot of different vehicles to choose from and you can alter the with colours and different components – some change your stats and others alter your appearance. As you finish races, the top three racers can steal components from the bottom three racers.
While the game is cute and charming, the actual racing is unfortunately not much fun. It takes ages to get up to full speed and other racers coming near you will knock you about. I also found my car to just roll over a lot, particularly on long turns and I really couldn’t work out what I was doing wrong. I eventually learned to anticipate the rolls so I could plan the quick turns and performed fairly well – unless I got stuck in the middle of the pack and bashed about by others.
There’s also a nice track editor in the game, with a few options for different kinds of straights, turns and curves. Unfortunately, there’s only one (fairly hideous) style to the track, so they’ll all look the same, but it’s a really nice feature.
I wish I could enjoy Penny Racers more than I did, the setting is adorable and I like some of the ideas. Hopefully the sequel will sort out some of the issues.