The premise is simple: Slot Cars, Hot Wheels, Tyco RC, in Mixed Reality. You have a car; go fast, race to the finish. You’ll love it.
Track Craft today
Track Craft improves upon the ’90s classic in a few ways: Compete for speed globally. Reset your car and retry a track with one click. Bend gravity by driving vertically. Apply portals and ignore physics.
The game launches natively in mixed reality, so you’re faced with just a floating track in your living room. It’s more pleasant than the VR liminal space, not to mention there’s no risk of your dog or kid brother bumbling over and trampling your setup.
The cars perform great. On your controllers, one trigger accelerates while the other brakes, higher speed means tougher turning and controls. You can adjust your angle in midair to try and stick landings on jumps. Everything feels responsive, fair, and the right amount of unforgiving should you risk cutting a turn short to shave seconds off your time. It would be nice to restart the course more quickly via a controller button, instead of a floating button in VR, but that issue’s squabbly. First-person mode I steered clear of — if you want the rollercoaster-like experience, it’s there for you, with all the usual speed thrills and motion-induced chills — but this is neither a key draw nor detriment to the core game.
The standard arcade mode progresses nicely. Each world introduces a car that feels slightly different and a new mechanic to master — obstacles, time-released deliverable objects, portals, I won’t spoil it all. Several tracks dangle tantalizing shortcuts which compelled me to try over and over. I need to pick up a few objects, but in which order? Several tracks are long or oddly shaped, turning my perspective into a new gameplay mechanic: is there somewhere I can stand to see everything, or is there a turn that I can accept trying to navigate blindly, or should I try to change perspective partway? That could be a nuisance for some; in its current limited dosages, I found it fun.
Comfort
Track Craft is currently “unrated” on comfort in the Quest Store. It defaults to Mixed Reality, 3rd Person, which should be measured as “Comfortable” if used exclusively. It can be toggled to VR if users prefer that to MR, and it can be cycled to one of several 1st person POV options which may result in comfort levels similar to playing a typical rollercoaster VR game, but these alternatives are entirely optional and don’t detract from the core game.
What should MR Track Craft be?
RollerCoaster Tycoon meets Mario Maker meets Demeo.
While there are a few niche RollerCoaster Tycoon communities still producing delightful and creative new coasters, the 1999 PC classic peaked too early to capture the magic of an online hive mind to push designs to their limits and surface special ideas by popular vote. Track Craft has arrived on time. The community is small but growing — there’s room for you to claim spots on leaderboards! — there are already tons of custom tracks to enjoy. Some of the community tracks I tried are radical. Others seem near impossible. Here’s me trying (unsuccessfully) to land an extremely difficult sideways jump, through a hoop, onto a wide landing pad in one tantalizing custom track:
The track editor has the essentials you’d expect: wrist menu, plenty of different block shapes, drag and drop (and duplicate) in 3D space.
I’ve fantasized about applying the way expert RollerCoaster Tycoon designers manage for coasters’ fun and intensity scores — how many loops could I put into a Track Craft track; what’s the biggest jump I could set up for others to land reliably? (Or otherwise challenge folks to land at all?)
Short of that, I enjoyed making a preliminary teleportation-heavy course that’d be a near auto-scroller, but fun to watch. I could imagine 20xing the concept to produce a really zany and delightful visual. It would definitely help if the track editor offered gridlines, like a lightweight version of what ShapesXR offers, to ensure that key pieces line up perfectly.
Most of all I’m excited for developer Brainz Gamify’s promise of multiplayer with avatars in the editor. It’ll be exhilarating to play Track Craft with a friend across the country — not just to race but to collaboratively build, and decide whether the track should turn here, or face an obstacle there, or result in the kinds of ludicrous shapes and concepts that result from multiple minds at play. There’s a future where you meet a coworker here the same way you’d meet for a round of golf (Walkabout Mini-, or otherwise).
Track Craft Review: Final Verdict
Track Craft is dang fun! You’ll get your money’s worth! It’s a game you’ll reach for when you want just another quick session (their tagline, “just one more try!” rings true), a game you’d show a friend who wants a lightweight MR experience, a game you’d relish in your rotation when you want a casual activity while catching up with an old friend. Pick it up!
UploadVR uses a 5-Star rating system for our game reviews – you can read a breakdown of each star rating in our review guidelines.
