Tanuki Sunset

My Saturday night co-op radar immediately dropped to zero when I pulled up the mode list here: Tanuki Sunset is strictly solo, no couch share, no online leaderboard to trash-talk your friends over. That out of the way, what this game actually delivers in its lane is surprisingly well-tuned. You play as a longboarding raccoon bombing down procedurally generated roads across mountain peaks, neon city streets, and beachside strips, steering left and right with the stick, hitting a dedicated button to drift into sharp corners, jumping off ramps, and pulling reverts to chain score multipliers. The control scheme is gamepad-first and properly responsive - tight hitboxes mean when you clip a car or tumble off the edge, it genuinely feels like your fault. The aesthetic is the headline act. Low-poly backdrops drenched in purples, pinks, and electric blues pull off an 80s vaporwave look that many bigger studios spend ten times the budget attempting. The soundtrack, a rotating cassette tape of synthwave, lo-fi, city pop, bossa nova, and future funk, earns serious credit for texture and variety. It is the kind of music that tricks your brain into a flow state even when a particularly gnarly drift sends your raccoon sailing off a cliff for the fourth time in a row. The hub world, Bob's Skate Shop, lets you spend collected Bits on purely cosmetic gear - new decks, wheels, shirts, sunglasses, and a knockoff Walkman - and while none of it alters stats, dressing your trash panda in a tie-dye and pit-viper shades before a run somehow makes the next attempt feel fresher. The structural honesty check: the nine campaign levels can be cleared in under two hours, and the post-game Arcade mode adds a set of timed Trials and an Endless run, but neither stretches things dramatically. Checkpoints are spread out enough that one bad drift can cost you several minutes of progress - not brutal, but enough to sting. The procedural generation stops you memorising lines, which is good for replayability in theory, though it also means occasional visual pop-in as track geometry renders in ahead of you. One known, long-standing issue: at least one Steam achievement appears to be glitched and may never be patched, so completionists should mentally write off a full 100% before buying. No post-launch updates have addressed it since the game released in December 2020. As a casual drop-in experience, this sits right next to those mobile-style endless runners that you fire up for twenty minutes when your brain needs a rest. The difference is that Tanuki Sunset has just enough score-chasing depth - sticker challenges, time trial ghosts, that one rival named Steven who shows up to race you mid-run - to justify returning beyond the credits. If the music clicks for you and you are not hunting achievements, the replay loop genuinely holds. If you were hoping for a four-player split-screen session or any kind of competitive social layer, look elsewhere. This one is a solo vibe, headphones in, lo-fi beats rolling.

Riley · Scout Team

Sports & racing

Be the first to comment on Tanuki Sunset.