Smells Like Burnt Rubber

My instinct when I see a top-down arcade racer from a solo dev is to check how many hours the online lobby stays populated before the whole thing turns into a ghost town. That instinct is still valid here, but Smells Like Burnt Rubber earns more patience than most. The game is a top-down, isometric arcade racer in the vein of those browser-era Flash racers that ate your lunch break, and that retro DNA is very much intentional. Vehicle handling is deliberately loose and collision-friendly, meaning the skill expression comes less from clean apex-hitting and more from reading your opponents, timing rams, and surviving whatever obstacle the track throws at you, including, yes, oncoming trains on certain circuits. The mode structure is where this thing actually has legs. You get online multiplayer for global races, a full four-player splitscreen mode, a hybrid option where local players can pull in remote friends through online co-op, and 14 challenges playable solo or in splitscreen. There is also a Grand Prix format and weekly and monthly global leaderboard events, which gives the solo crowd a reason to keep loading it up beyond casual sessions. The vehicle roster splits across at least two handling archetypes: high-speed sports cars on concrete tracks versus monster trucks on mud, and swapping between them for different circuits actually changes how you approach corners and contact. That is a small but meaningful design choice that keeps runs from blending together. The network layer has had at least one significant overhaul since launch, with the developer pushing a reworked implementation through a public beta branch and adding LAN support in the same update. That kind of post-launch attention from a one-person studio deserves credit. However, with a small player base and no ranked matchmaking to speak of, online lobbies are not guaranteed to be busy at any given hour. If you are buying this primarily for solo online ranked play, the infrastructure just is not there yet. The splitscreen and challenge modes carry the load when lobbies are quiet. The game launched in August 2023 and sits at a strong approval rating from the players who have bothered to review it, which skews toward people who grabbed it for couch sessions rather than grinding online. The soundtrack features German newcomer bands, which is a quirky detail that actually fits the lo-fi energy of the whole package. Controller support is solid and the input scheme is simple enough that you can hand a pad to someone who has never played a racing game and they will be competitive within two laps. Bottom line: this is a party-first, couch-first racing game with enough online infrastructure to function globally, but the ceiling on online play is low. If you have a regular group, even occasionally remote, the hybrid co-op setup and Grand Prix mode give you a genuinely fun loop. Solo players grinding leaderboard events will find something there too, but manage expectations on matchmaking population.

Fred · Scout Team

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