Space dust racers

Games
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It’s no Mario Kart, but it looks fun.

Space Dust Studios’ debut project Space Dust Racers, a vehicular combat party game inspired by classics such as Mashed and Micro Machines, was first known to be coming to the Xbox One when it was featured as part of the huge line-up of ID@Xbox titles shown at San Francisco’s GDC earlier last month. At that time we knew that up to 16 players could battle it out in the game’s round-based fight to the finish line, and you would be forgiven for believing that this would require online play to achieve.

Thanks to “innovative wifi controller technology”, the title will allow up to 16 people to play locally by using smartphones, tablets and laptops as additional controllers. The technology, which won the award for Best Technology at Freeplay 2015, is completely browser-based, meaning no smartphone app download is required and will likely work with most devices.

Glen Stuart, Lead Technology Developer at Space Dust Studios explains:
The game acts as a web server, allowing devices to connect and send input to and from the game session. The technology also works with most USB and bluetooth devices, allowing physical gamepads to be daisy-chained to Android smartphones and laptops for tactile feedback.

At time of writing, the title still has 29 days to go to reach its goal of $128,000 AUD.

Space Dust Racers is currently in development for PC, but an Xbox One version is planned for release sometime in early 2016 if everything continues as planned.

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thats some rpetty good tech. hope it works well.

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You may have missed it in the ID@Xbox Goes to GDC articles. Far be it from us to let you remain unaware of Space Dust Racers.

This upcoming kart racer from indie developer Space Dust Studios out of Melbourne has released a pair of new videos. First up we have the Steam Greenlight trailer.

Next, we have a nine-minute gameplay video showing off some of the zany antics and weapons players will use in their attempt to take each other out and be the first to cross the finish line, or the last to stay alive in this case. It features one of the maps set to release with the game, Sunset Strip, as well as a game mode called Knockout, which is essentially a last-man-standing deathmatch mode.

As previously covered, Space Dust Racers supports up to 16 players in local play via cellphones-as-controllers tech. Interestingly, the devs have elected to include options such as ‘pickup handicap’ and ‘armor handicap’ to even the playing field between different-skilled players. Darn casuals ruining the hardcore family-friendly genres!

Space Dust Racers is set to release in early 2016 for Xbox One.