Go Kart Island

I'll be straight with you: the moment I heard "open-world kart racer where you play as a highland cow trying to bribe a weasel mayor," I was already sold before touching the controller. Go Kart Island is a solo indie effort from one developer, Ewan McKenzie of Grumpy Pizza, and it wears that origin story with pride. The concept blends the breezy open-world exploration of something like A Short Hike with the item-hurling chaos of classic arcade kart racing, and for the most part, it works better than you'd expect from a debut title. The core loop is simple and satisfying. You roam a single island that packs in a mountain top, an airport, a lagoon, and several distinct biomes into one surprisingly varied map. Scattered across it are events that earn you coins, and you need 1,000 of them to pay the entry fee to the BIG RACE. Those events cover six different styles, including circuit races, checkpoint races, collect races, chases, item hunts, and delivery missions. The handling is the star of the show: the driftslide mechanic clicks in a way that feels almost tuned for the island's hairpin-heavy road layout, and once you get the rhythm of hopping into a drift and boosting out clean, the traversal becomes genuinely enjoyable rather than just functional. Items like the homing pizza and the Squish-E-Boi Cube keep races chaotic, and the 32 unlockable animal characters, while all handling identically, at least give you something to chase across the 34 story events and 84 gold-trophy challenges. Here is where I have to be honest with the couch-gaming crowd, though, because this matters a lot if you were planning to fire this up for group sessions: there is no local multiplayer. None. Not even in the standalone event menu outside story mode. For a game that screams kart racer night out, that is a real gap. Completion of the main story events is also on the shorter side, and anyone who blasts through story mode will find the challenge mode only stretches things so far. A free demo is available on Steam with the first five events and about a third of the island, and crucially your save carries over to the full game, so you can try before committing. There are a handful of minor bugs reported by players post-launch, and the open world functions more as a hub connecting events than a true free-roam playground where anything wild can happen off the beaten path. Point-to-point events also lock you to set roads rather than letting you find your own line, which undercuts the open-world promise a little. These are rough edges you would expect from a solo developer's first game, and they do not tank the experience, but they are worth knowing about upfront. If your Saturday nights involve four people on a couch, this one will leave you wanting a multiplayer mode that does not exist. If you are a solo player with a soft spot for 16-bit kart racers, open-world collectathons, and animal casts with personality, Go Kart Island punches well above its weight. The drift feels good, the map is fun to explore, and the whole thing has the kind of cheerful handmade energy that makes you root for the developer as much as for Lachlan.

Riley · Scout Team

Sports & racing

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