I'm surprised Horizon Chase Turbo wasn't mentioned. It's very arcady, but it runs great on the Steam Deck and is a great game for short sessions. The game also has a great soundtrack.
this post was submitted on 08 May 2024
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What I love about Horizon Chase Turbo is that it celebrates old school racing games made during a time that it was simply impossible to create a realistic driving physics engine (I mean nowadays Wreckfest runs like butter on most modern smartphones which kind of breaks my brain a little). Horizon Chase recognizes this genre of arcade racing for how it should be seen from the perspective of modern driving physics engines, not as a curious but obsolete historical oddity but as an expression of what racing games can be outside of a narrow continuum with racing sims on one end and GTA or Forza style arcade style racing games on the other.... that are mainly focused on sanding off rough edges to the game mechanics implications of driving sim physics rather than treating the departure from semi-realistic physics as a creative opportunity.
(I suppose there are cart racers that arent really on that continuum but they arent really concerned with evolving the racing genre for the most part)
Well my suggestion isn’t strictly a racing game but I don’t really get latched onto traditional racing games around a handful of tracks where you repeat the same course over and over again.
I like open world games where I can drive around doing missions or just cruising (think driving around in GTA vibes) and thus Motor Town is by far my favorite singleplayer and multiplayer racing game currently especially for the deck and especially because of its low-poly graphical style keeping graphics performance reasonable even though it is the unreal engine under the hood.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1369670/Motor_Town_Behind_The_Wheel/
The tire physics make throwing a massive engine in a car and ripping power slides at 80 mph a blast. The driving just feels damn good, the only games that beat it are BeamNG and maybe some of the bigger racing games like Assetto Corsa or iRacing but I don’t know I haven’t played those because in those games I can’t buy a box truck, throw a v12 in it and drive around like a mad man delivering packages, then abruptly decide to go for chill vibes and do autopilot deliveries with my 18 wheeler, then decide to some urgent taxi jobs in my 4 door sports cars…
Seriously Wreckfest I think is the only other game that has felt in the moment to moment physics like I was driving a high torque real wheel drive high speed vehicle that can absolutely rocket around corners so long as the oversteer doesn’t get out of control and send you careening off the road. Mmmmmmm.
Motor Town has a the brilliant autopilot feature you can toggle on and off whenever you want which makes this the perfect driving game to play on a mobile gaming device like the deck because you can walk away or put the deck down for a second by just putting your vehicle into autopilot and treating the game more like an “idle clicker” game than a game that requires your constant focus.
No extensive destruction modeling in Motor Town, your vehicle definitely suffers damage in terms of performance being impacted from crashes but it doesn’t deform the vehicle like the detailed simulations of BeamNG or Wreckfest. That isn’t that important to me for this type of game though.
Speaking of car crashes, Rigs Of Rods I think deserves a mention here too especialllly since it is open source!!. Yes it is old but it is still being actively developed (albeit at a slow pace) and that age makes it run fantastic on the Steam Deck. I wouldn’t suggest Rigs Of Rods as a replacement for the other racing games suggested in this video, but the sandboxy vibes of Rigs Of Rods are ideal for a portable device like the Steam Deck where you might want to play a game that doesn’t require you to do anything but mindlessly smash cars into walls as fast as you can lol.
It also is worth mentioning, a whole lot of people have put a WHOLE lot of effort into making detailed cars for Rigs Of Rods. Apparently a decent amount of vehicles including stuff like Dakar rally style off-roading heavy duty trucks didn’t make it into BeamNG because of the conundrum of moving donated work to a monetized game.
So this isn’t some empty game with no actual significant body of quality modded content, there are a lot of toys in Rigs Of Rods worth playing around with.
I haven't heard of Motor Town before, but it looks great. I'll have to check it out later today.
If you want a fast car quick, the mini cooper is cheap and even with a small engine it will go veryyyy fast.
If you want to drive fast, take only urgent taxi jobs or deliver pizzas, though don’t let anyone fool you into thinking that you can’t treat every single job in Motor Town like it is an old episode of Top Gear and you have to accomplish it as quickly and chaotically as possible.
Some people play Motor Town for the Euro Truck Simulator vibes, some people play Motor Town for the “uh oh why did I think I could take this corner so fast in my souped up bus” vibes.
All of the trackmania games. Even the older titles still have active communities creating maps and plugins.
+1 for Trackmania. Very sad that the most recent game is published by ubishit, who kind of made a live service game out of it (different tiers of access, starting at 10 bucks a year)
I'm not very thrilled with the subscription model as I'd rather just spend the $60 and get it over with, but at least they didn't go full scummy and add loot boxes or remove free user generated cosmetics.
These don't exactly "fit in" with the rest of the list, but on Deck I've personally had a blast with CarX Drift Racing Online and the Sonic &ASRT Collection
New Star GP looks quite cool. Could be a nice pick up and play but with enough content for longer sessions.
I didn’t watch the full video (at work) so sorry if it was mentioned, but for anyone fancying burnout paradise, the old game (not remaster) does not use the EA launcher so you can avoid that mess.
Any "arcade" racer will do well on it. I've already played Forza 4/5, Dirt 4/Rally, and Grid Autosport on mine. It lends itself well to those type of games.
Even the lighter sims work decent enough. (Project Cars, etc.) If they work with the major controllers, they tend to work on the deck just fine.
And going off the with supersquirrel, there are a lot of other types of driving games that work well. (Spintires, American/Euro Truck Simulator, City Car Driving, and Pure Rock Crawling.)
And going off the with supersquirrel, there are a lot of other types of driving games that work well. (Spintires, American/Euro Truck Simulator, City Car Driving, and Pure Rock Crawling.
Don't forget Snowrunner, the game where instead of racing against time you race against mud.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1465360/SnowRunner/?curator_clanid=32513338
If you want detailed and fun offroading but in more focused and bitesized amounts (perfect for on the go) check out the superb Offroad Mania. There are timed levels and infinite procedurally generated rock crawling endurance challenges among other modes. The low poly art style looks great and allows for extremely efficient performance on the deck.