JDM: Japanese Drift Master

My first thought booting up JDM: Japanese Drift Master was genuine excitement. An open-world drift game set in a fictional Japanese prefecture, built around iconic cars from Nissan, Subaru, Honda and Mazda, with a manga-panel story framing it all? That pitch lands squarely in my wheelhouse. Reality, as it turns out, is a bit messier than the brochure. The setup has you playing as Touma, a Polish racer who burned his European career to the ground and fled to Japan to rebuild from scratch, starting life as a delivery driver before working his way into the local drift scene. It's Tokyo Drift energy without the Hollywood budget, and the manga storytelling panels are a charming touch that fits the culture better than a cutscene would. The fictional Guntama prefecture gives you over 250 km of mountain passes, rural towns, neon-lit city streets and a handful of dirt roads to play with, and the world genuinely looks good running on Unreal Engine 5. The car sounds are a genuine highlight too, with reviewers noting that the audio work makes you feel like you're actually behind the wheel of a Silvia or a Skyline. Where things get complicated is the physics and driving models. The game offers two modes: Arcade for beginners who want accessible sideways fun, and Simcade with assists off, requiring you to manage clutch kicks, countersteer and throttle modulation yourself. In Simcade, the handling model has real moments of satisfaction once it clicks. The problem is that the game also asks you to do grip racing and drag racing, and both feel badly bolted on. Grip events fight the physics constantly since the cars always want to slide, and drag racing is exactly as exciting as staring at a straight line for ten seconds. The drift side of the game? Mostly fun, especially if you've put in time at the Drift School, a dedicated practice area that the game unlocks early. There are RPG-style progression loops too, with driver and car experience systems that unlock body kits, spoilers, wheel setups, camber adjustment, turbo upgrades and more. That tuning depth is genuinely impressive for an indie title. The rough edges are hard to ignore though. Loading times between races are painful, fast travel is slow enough that reviewers joked you might as well drive there, and some bugs including floating character models and inconsistent traffic AI made it into the launch build. The car roster sits at around 27 vehicles at launch, and while some manufacturers like Toyota and Mitsubishi appear with generic placeholder names instead of real licenses, Nissan, Subaru, Honda and Mazda are fully represented. Steam player reviews sit at about 74 percent positive overall, which tells you this crowd is mostly on board but aware of the warts. Critics are split, with scores ranging from enthusiastic to outright disappointed depending on how much they cared about the drifting specifically versus the broader package. From a hardware angle: the game is designed primarily around gamepad play, and steering wheel support currently covers Logitech and Thrustmaster only. No split-screen, no local multiplayer, this is a solo experience through and through. If you were hoping to run a Saturday night four-player drift tournament on the couch, this one's not the answer. What it is, is a passion project from a Polish indie team that clearly loves JDM culture deeply, and that love shows in the atmosphere, the car detail and the mountain road layouts. Get in with realistic expectations, stay in Arcade or Simcade drift mode, and ignore the grip events entirely.

Riley · Scout Team

Sports & racing

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