Kanjozoku Game レーサー
For as many racing games that I've covered and have yet to be released, Kanjozoku Game is a game that has slipped passed many radars. During the previous Next Fest, I had looked at several racing games in progress, with Kanjozoku being one of the games I've seen but I decided not to look into it further. "Japanese-style" street racing indie games are surprisingly a dime a dozen on Steam, so much so that I should make a list and detail my experiences with the titles.
I mean, there's the Switch port of Super Street The Game, Super Street Racer but the original game I have yet to cover on here, and for a good reason. Most games follow a specific formula to capture the glory days of Need For Speed Underground and the "Tuner-era" titles. Looking at my rating and the previous sentence, you'd think that Kanjozoku Game is another cog in this machine and was a waste of money.
You'd be correct, but over the weekend I saw this game was heavily discounted. Like, 90% discount. The game was sixty cents and by the time this post goes up, you'd have several hours to claim it. This game is not worth six dollars but for sixty cents, I'm willing to compromise as I feel the content currently in Kanjozoku is around the two-dollar range. As to be expected from other similar "simulators," upon start-up you get sent to the main menu.
What I didn't expect, along with my starter Honda Civic, was a "waifu" character. That's right, you can select a "waifu" to represent who will be driving behind the wheel. Unfortunately, in actual gameplay, the waifu model is nowhere to be found so I guess it's purely cosmetics. Bummer, I wanted to drive the highways as an anime waifu. I had enough money to start with so I decided to buy an MX5.
...And moments after I entered my first cop chase, I got flung into the air and glitched out of bounds. It was fun for 10 seconds until gravity took its course.
By default, you're connected to the game's online servers and the game was as populated as you'd expect from a sixty-cent game. The in-game chat was filled with those who had played the game since its release, newcomers who were mystified by the game's existence, and those who wanted to make more money. More on that in a second.
An interesting thing to note is that upon the game's release, it suffered a malware attack of all things. Not through the developers themselves, but the chat system had little to no protection that it was possible to send viruses through in-game chat. In the evening I spent playing this game, the chat was lively but no one was sending spyware or anything. It seems several patches ago the developers fixed the issue but still, that's a scary thought for your Halloween. I had no issues with the game's performance on that end at least.
Now that I got that scare over and done with...
There are two options, going to the Streets and going on the Track. The former is the game's "meat" and it's about as filling as eating a McDouble with small fries. No bev. As you cruise around this honestly well-detailed map as it goes through neighborhoods and city centers, you're going to attract the attention of the cops. Don't expect Most Wanted levels of cops here as they are stiff and not a challenge. The biggest challenge is the AI traffic that you can amusingly shove out of the way like Burnout.
The sense of speed is there but after a while, I felt no difference going from 200 km/h to 300+ km/h. It felt as if the game's "top speed" is locked and even if the car goes faster, it's not by a whole lot. In the customization menu, you can engine swap which becomes amusing. Why spend over 700k on a Porsche when you can buy a cheap Integra and engine swap it with the Porsche's boxer engine? Heck, you can fit a Wankel Rotary engine in a Honda Civic EK9 and it's probably the car that's the most fun to drive.
There are racing events scattered throughout the streets and you can invite other racers to join. It's not only more fun that way but it's also the quickest way to get money. Each race you win earns you 20k and most of them aren't hard. The faster your car is compared to the other drivers, the more you're guaranteed to win the race. The rich get richer huh?
Other than point-to-point races and the occasional cop chase, that's all you can do in the streets. Be careful of attracting the cops' attention and entering a race because the cops will spawn after the race ends and you will get busted if you don't immediately start driving. This isn't the only glitch, as mentioned above, I warped out of bounds at one point. If your car enters a collision and it's tipped upside down, just reset. You're not fixing its orientation.
The three tracks are just circuits with the handling altered completely so that every car can drift. Drivetrains didn't affect too much of the car's handling and outside of engine tune-ups, you can't go into deep details with the suspension. The one thing that determines how a car slide is its power. It's easy to initiate a drift and to maintain it providing you know throttle control. You also gain money from doing this but it's a paltry amount. See the issue? For a $0.60 game, it's amazing. I'm reviewing this as if I spent 6 dollars on it and there's too little to recommend buying this at full price.
So there are not a lot of ways to gain a lot of money, which opens up a lot within the game. Yet, seeing my photos it's clear I had quite a bit of money to spend. With money, you can test out what car works well with which engine and it just feels nice to go fast. Unfortunately, with the repetition and a lot of limited content, even having money is a drag if you can't do much in-game. So, how did I get so much cash in Kanjozoku? Well, it's easy! The secret to making money is...!
Kanjozoku Game is available on Steam.