Three indie rally games

[19-04-2026]

I recently picked up #DRIVE Rally on Steam. Given I already have art of rally and Old School Rally, two games with basically the same premise as the one I was about to buy, both sitting in my library at 42 and 23 hours of playtime respectively, I asked myself, how many indie rally games do I need? What is #DRIVE Rally realistically gonna be able to give to me that the other two can't?

All these three games are at a glance, more or less the same. A rally game, like the good ol' Colin McRae Rally, made by indie studios with simple graphics. But even within that framework, there's a lot that you can do differently in their presentation. Old School Rally is the one that's most obviously trying to be a retro game. The graphics are very PS1, with basic shaders, harsh polygons, crunchy and at times even wobbly textures, and simple environments, depending on your point of view maybe even a bit bare the way you would expect from a perhaps rushed mid-budget game from that era. art of rally and #DRIVE Rally do have simple graphics, but they look distinctly modern. art of rally has a slick, minimalistic shine to it as if it were rendered within an Apple Store, while #DRIVE Rally takes its design into a low-poly, but very high in environmental detail and cartoony colourful look, fit with graffiti handwriting looking UI, giving it an almost Jet Set Radio type aesthetic.

The feel of playing them also couldn't be more different. All three games have very responsive and direct handling models, something that is very easy to pick up but also lets you really push for high-risk-high-reward driving, making practising very satisfying. Still, each game's presentation results in a very different mood. art of rally is noteworthy for its unusually high camera angle, giving you a great overview of your environment and making you feel more detached from the action that takes place at ground level. Combined with the game's minimalistic presentation, this can make playing art of rally feel almost like you're in a state of trance, or at the very least, very relaxed. The exact opposite here is #DRIVE Rally, with its camera low to the ground. #DRIVE Rally feels very fast, the detail environment is racing by, your co-pilot shouts frenzied pacenotes at you, the road is frighteningly narrow, and you feel every bump in the road, constantly adjusting the car that feels like it's gonna fly off course any moment and smash into a thousand pieces on the next tree. It's very fun, very engaging and exciting, but also pretty exhausting to play. The game really demands you to be locked in. Old School Rally provides a good middle ground here. The roads feel a little wider and less bumpy, the tone of the co-driver is much more detached, and you generally feel much more in control. art of rally and Old School Rally are games you can very much play to unwind, while #DRIVE Rally chews through you.

Although I may make #DRIVE Rally sound like a hardcore experience, it's really not. The difficulty is no higher than of the other games, and the game has a goofy, cartoony charm to it. It lets you pick racing teams with their own dedicated co-driver, who all have their own personality and distinct voice lines. This adds a lot of character to the game, although perhaps the quippy one-liners and inspirational LinkedIn-posts they shout when they should be reading pace notes can quickly get old. Old School Rally is fairly barebones in its presentation, but a cute detail is that it lets you view your collection of unlocked rally cars as a little customizable shelf of model cars, approximating catering to the affinities of car nerds in a similar way that major games like Test Drive: Unlimited or Project Gotham Racing 3 did with their showrooms or the Gran Turismo series with their detailed car histories, but on a much smaller scale, with toys. I think that's cute. art of rally, in its minimalist, clean design, might give off the impression that it's cold and sterile, but this couldn't be further from the truth. The landscapes are soaked in the saturated, warm colours of the sunset, and are full of sweet little details, like tiny vehicles parked outside the course, wild animals scattered around in the landscape, and the tiny block people spectators gathered around the track that audibly cheer and move away from your approaching car just like in real life rally events.

Unfortunately, I have to say that with a level-headed look at these games, Old School Rally is definitely the weakest one. Its presentation is fairly bare-bones and so are many of its environments. The game's structure is repetitive and nonsensical, many of it's stages just being reversed versions of other stages and putting random rally stages from different locations in random orders. You don't really feel connected to Old School Rally as a world, because there isn't really one. While the game certainly takes a couple of shortcuts to its design, I do wanna give credit where credit is due. I started playing Old School Rally the moment it was put into early access, I saw the extremely bare early levels, and was able to watch the game grow over time as the devs added more and more environmental details and new tracks which only got more decorated and expansive over time. And, despite everything, Old School Rally is also the one of these three games that I have, at time of writing, the most playtime in. So there's clearly something about it I find compelling. I suppose, while Old School Rally is the most basic, the most stripped-down, maybe that is its strength. Driving feels good, it looks like a good ol' PS1 game from your childhood, and it doesn't demand anything else from you. I can't deny the appeal of a game you can just throw on and play without any strings attached.

#DRIVE Rally also feels like the most ambitious game of the three and it gives you undoubtedly the loudest experience. It's cartoony, fun and intense and gives you many detailed environments, tons of different cars, characters and upgrades. Although, since I criticised the structure of Old School Rally, I'm not sure if I like the structure here either. You can pick a team, and with that team you do a series of rally stages in one location. This means that you feel more connected to the world cause it feels like there's a reason you're in a place and as you play through the game, you travel from place to place as you progress, making the move feel earned. Yet you also stay in one location for a very long time to a point where seeing the same environments may get tiring. Sure, technically, nothing is stopping you from swapping over to a different team and progress there a little for a change, but I feel like you are definitely encouraged to keep playing in the path you're currently at and I also feel the desire to finish the thing I've started rather than work on a couple of different career paths simultaneously.

The structure of art of rally I think is the best out of the three. It sends you from place to place frequently, but has you do a handful of stages in a location at a time, giving you both variety and making it feel realistic, like a rally championship that could conceivably, logistically, actually happen. This is also how the old Colin McRae Rally worked. On the other hand, the game is easily the most artsy, the most abstract, the most ambient. Given its many charming little details, it is clearly made with a lot of love for rally sport, but playing it, to me the rallying almost feels secondary to the atmosphere the game is creating. With its serene mood, its expansive landscapes and its free roam mode with collectibles, it encourages you most to feel immersed in the atmosphere of the environment. While this is very pretty, as a pure racing game, this works the least for me out of the three. Because of its presentation and high camera angle, I feel the least personally attached to the actual driving itself, which makes it difficult for me to "lock in" and actually play well. Combined with the fact that the handling model is the least responsive of the three which makes it more difficult to adjust for mistakes (although rally cars tend to be very snappy in general which makes it still more responsive than most modern racing games), ironically, given the game's calming approach, much more quickly leads to frustration when I actually try to be good at it.

The question I posed at the beginning of this post was rhetorical; I've played racing games all my life and I am always interested in a new, good execution of the same premise. I think driving is fun. A good, satisfying handling model and enjoyable courses are enough for me to like a game even if that's all there is. So I would've been interested in picking up #DRIVE Rally even if it had nothing new to contribute. But playing it, I really was surprised how completely different these games feel, despite all being essentially the same thing.