DeathSprint 66

I kept bouncing between two thoughts while playing DeathSprint 66: this is one of the freshest ideas in arcade racing in years, and also, why did almost nobody show up to the party. Sumo Digital built something genuinely special here. You play as a Clone Jockey piloting expendable human clones through obstacle-riddled on-foot racetracks, running, boosting, wall-running, grinding rails, drifting, and jumping your way toward a finish line that is actively trying to kill you with laser beams, circular saws, and whatever heat-seeking ability the racer behind you just picked up. It sits somewhere between Ghostrunner and a violent game show, and the closest comparison in tone is Split/Second crossed with The Running Man. The movement is the whole game, and it is very good. Chaining a wall-run into a rail grind into a boosted drift sounds complicated, but the controller layout is practically identical to any standard arcade racer: right trigger to accelerate, left trigger to drift, jump and boost on face buttons. The tutorial gets you functional in minutes. Mastery is another thing entirely. Boost is earned by stringing together clean traversal moves, and skilled players can chain it continuously to push past the default top speed cap into something approaching F-Zero GX delirium. Getting there takes time, a fair number of splattered clones, and genuine willingness to learn each track's rhythm. The PvE Episodes mode, which includes time trials, fixed-lives challenges, and trap-heavy bonus maps not found in PvP, exists specifically to help you build that knowledge offline. For the sports-and-racing crowd asking whether this works on gamepad: yes, cleanly. No wheel or HOTAS required, no weird peripheral support to wrangle. It runs on PC only, and performance is generally solid at medium settings even on mid-range hardware, though pushing Ultra 4K can stress even higher-end rigs. NVIDIA DLSS with frame generation support is present, which helps. The aesthetic is cyberpunk dystopia done well, all flooded streets, neon, and bleak skyscrapers, and the techno soundtrack actively pumps you up during races. The eight-player online PvP mode is where the game shines brightest, with abilities like the Enraged Charge, Seeker Drone, Mag Shield, and the crowd-pleasing Giga Saw creating the kind of chaotic moments that make you yell at the screen. Multiplayer lobbies can be filled with bots when human opponents are scarce, which matters more than it should. Because here is the honest part: the player numbers are very low. At launch in September 2024 the peak sat under 150 concurrent players on Steam, and that figure has continued to decline. Finding real opponents can be a struggle, and the online experience lives or dies on matchmaking speed. There are also legitimate complaints about loading and intro sequences feeling longer than the races themselves in some cases, a thin roster of tracks, and AI that swings between punishingly hard and laughably passive. A cosmetics system exists but everything unlocks through play with no additional purchases, which is a genuinely good design call that deserves acknowledgment. The content is lean for a multiplayer-focused title, and there is no split-screen, which rules out the Saturday couch tournament crowd entirely. Still, for a solo player grinding PvE or for a small group willing to coordinate online sessions, DeathSprint 66 delivers a movement-based racing experience with a ceiling high enough to keep skill-hungry players busy for dozens of hours. The core loop rewards patience and reflexes in equal measure, and nailing a clean run feels like the genre at its most pure. It is a shame the audience never materialised, because the game itself more than holds up. Riley, Scout Team

Valve rates this game Steam Deck Playable. Runs on Linux but with crashes or issues. Based on 9 ProtonDB community reports.

Be the first to comment on DeathSprint 66.