In theory, Star Wars: Galactic Racer has all the ingredients of something that feels made especially for me. It is a racer game, which I play far too many of, and it’s a roguelike, which I sink excessively much time into. This is before bringing up that the old Episode 1 podracing game was something I binged every single weekend as soon as I got out of school. There was this feeling that the stars had aligned to give me something I was really excited to get started with. In practice, maybe I created this pedestal that the game couldn’t live up to.
The story portion of the game looked like it would be the most engaging, but it fell the shortest by far. Not that this really affects the game, but once again, a Star Wars game, IN A UNIVERSE OF ALIENS, and I am stuck playing as the most boring human in the galaxy. Perhaps that isn’t fair; after all, they wear a helmet and full-body outfit as if to let you know that you might not be. Look at that helmet, though. This is just me musing anyway, as they state you are human often enough. Every alien with tendrils or horns out here on full display, but not you. There is some choice in the whole design, but it really isn’t much. Given that the title has some multiplayer, I might have hoped for more personality.
Once you do create the character, you get the exciting prospect of being a recruited racer who is brought in to defeat Kestar Bool. If you are like me, you will get a fun intro where you are reminded how good you are and how you are the only person who can beat them. You will then spend 30 minutes placing 5th across multiple races because you are not, in fact, that good. This leads to the structure, which is set over multiple acts that largely shuffle planets as you participate in a multitude of races as you try to move up leagues.
There is a bit of pageantry for the first portion of the game. You get a few announced segments, and a few dynamic moments between you and other racers. The thing is, this fades into monotony fast. That is also not including the fact that once you reach Act Two, the races lose a lot of this. Characters have taunts and mocks, but these boil down to one or two you will hear a lot, over and over again. As far as narrative beats are concerned, they are few and far between. The story is rather light anyway. There is the underdog component, which keeps it slightly engaging, but it’s nothing that hasn’t been done much better.
What the game tries to do is offer little side moments that really add much, either, outside unlocking abilities. What this is functionally is the rivalry system, which I was hoping might have more depth. Basically, as you progress, you can set up bets with opponents. Then, if you beat them enough, they talk to you and pretty much say nothing; then you race them more, and they challenge you to a one-on-one race. The odd part is that wagering can, at times, be the only stake in racing. You get some depth to your opponents, and they are definitely more interesting than protagonist Shade, but nothing dynamic or engaging.
The structure of the roguelike divides forward progression by planet. You arrive on a planet where you can interact with certain people to get more upgrade points for your vehicle or abilities, and then you go into a series of races. Breaking up, there are some special races you can take part in, and I did actually like that they brought back the Phantom Menace villain Subulba to curate some of these; they mostly amount to a series of podracing events where you are more limited than in the main game, but they at least offer captivating history and context, though again, light.
Where this doesn’t work is that there is no save or retry for any of this. If you fail in one of these special runs, you will be locked out of the mode completely. It might be encounterable on a later planet, though. On other runs, I only had one opportunity, making it a process to return, which makes failure a massive time punishment, as you work to complete the entire league you are in before you might have the option again.
It’s this feature that genuinely allows the entire thing to crumble. On a personal note, I hate it when a racing game doesn’t allow for a retry, even if it’s as forgiving as this whole process can be. This isn’t the first time I have played one that doesn’t include the feature, but there is a more obvious reason for Star Wars: Galactic Racer. Because it is a roguelike, the entire idea of punishing the player is more at the forefront, forcing you to try a league again and again until you finally hit all the turns right and land every jump.
The game isn’t just punishing because of that, though; it’s almost unfairly so. In any other racing game, failing a race might lead to a singular bad result. Here, starting one race where you are too late on the drift and slide straight into a wall can doom you. Then, instead of having one bad result you need to compensate for, you have an hour and a half of work, maybe even two, that you lose on the back of one bad race. That leads to a genuine level of frustration that I have not felt in a long time.
This is even more bizarre because the game also doesn’t seem to care in other places. One race type, elimination, will have you lose a tag (essentially your lives per run) for placing below 3rd. While a standard race lets you come in last without punishment, it will take a tag for crashing too often. Making it possible to cruise through some runs just based on following certain paths. But again, just getting started on the wrong foot as a racer can lead you right into defeat.
And the structure of said roguelike in Star Wars: Galactic Racer is fairly uninspired, as there are only three types of events to take part in: race, elimination, and a time trial type event that actually gets the most variety. There are multiple paths, though they can regularly feel like the choice isn’t significant, as you can pick two races, all feeding into eliminations, and so on. Some micro spaces break up that flow and can act as an event skip, but this doesn’t help much.
This is because a loop in this raceway can take two to four hours of doing the same things. Since the planets don’t randomize for your next run either, you will become familiar with the biomes and tracks through tedious monotony rather than from actual enjoyment. While the tracks can get mixed up, they all typically reuse certain elements for notable track design. More importantly, with each new league you enter, you do get more frequent alterations to the format of the tracks and different weather conditions, so they do mix it up. Once you get stuck, though, you will find yourself doing those variants a lot.
What makes it palatable is that the stages look gorgeous and feel genuine to the universe. Take Jakku, for instance, which involves racing mostly through desert terrain. What makes this planet great is that much of the racing involves ducking and weaving debris from starships. What makes this even better is that most of the stages see players racing through an actual downed star destroyer. And it feels organic. Not just like the developers threw it in as a nod; riding along the top of it as you ram into your rival is one of the more memorable things.
Then you have the planet of Crete, which has become a popular set piece since it appeared in the films due to that weird red salt effect as things move along the surface. That appears in Star Wars: Galactic Racer as well, which is a fantastic effect as speeders and bikes blow up on red dust. Even more interesting, this isn’t just an effect but has gameplay ramifications that punish players right behind them. As cool as the concept is, though, it literally prevents slipstreaming, which feels like the antithesis of a good racing title. The mix of status effects on each track, though, does keep it intriguing.
Blowing dust is something that only happens when players are on the planet’s surface, but much of that planet’s racing will take place underground in a cavern in which none of this matters. You get these well-presented moments where all the racers jump out of the cave and crash on a straightaway outside. For a brief moment, you are kicking up dust and fighting against it before going back into the caverns. Other stages have effects based on the temperature as well. Again, the typical best use of this is when you have a normal leg and then segue into the status effect, forcing you to change how you race for a moment before shifting back. Some levels will push this on you the whole time, and this can be occasionally enjoyable but can quickly become a hindrance.
And the racing is fast, sometimes much too fast when trying to react to all of these things. Going off of a jump will cause your camera to dip to a point where you can’t see anything on the screen, and there is more than a zero-sum game when the camera comes up; you will see yourself fly straight into a fall. Other things, like the crash cam you get when wrecking another racer, or even the respawn, have both sent me straight into a wall on more than one occasion. Speeds start at 300 to 400 and only go up from there, feeling a lot like Wipeout, except with the need to create something cinematic often getting in the way of the actual game.
Which is a shame because the game has good controls that feel like an homage to some of my favorite arcade racers. This is an arcade racer, which is probably the biggest reason I wanted to love Star Wars: Galactic Racer’s classic track-by-track race style. The drift button in that regard feels exactly like that of Ridge Racer and functions just as well, holding it and going straight into a power slide that propels you around corners with ease. You get the same feeling flying through the air and adjusting yourself into any position you want to land in.
Similar to Wipeout again, racing flows almost unilaterally through boost control, which is a concept that didn’t resonate with me. You have two boosts: one that works like a nitro injection that speeds you up to go faster. On the other end of that, you have another boost that is more of a risk/reward boost that speeds you up to a greater degree, BUT you risk a literal explosion if you hold it too long. I actually did like this system, but then races become about trying to balance both boosts, so you are just spamming them at all times. When tracks get tight or corners have weird edges, this becomes very hard to maintain without dying and guarantees you can’t win.
This then gets mixed into just how easy it is to smash into a wall, especially with podracers, which are a nightmare to control. The caves on Crete are a great example of a place you can do a perfect turn, then explode because the rocks on the wall stick out to a degree that will occasionally just blow you up. Then you have smashing enemies where they might barely react, and you might get thrown so hard you go straight into a wall. I love how this might be the game trying harder than any other game to invoke Burnout; we need a new Burnout. It just doesn’t all come together.
There is also so much confusing button management to contend with while you are at top speeds of 700. The more powerful boost requires waiting for a gauge to charge, then using it through a two-button press. If you want to corner without losing it and requiring a respawn, you then need to hit the drift, which requires the thumb two-button push, which I never enjoy, though I am built for it. Then you need to remember you have abilities on yet another button that you have to remember you can trigger. The attack powers play into a feeling of any number of the games I grew up with and get the closest to feeling like Podracing.
Where this does reach a fun effect is that much of the roguelike upgrading you do during a run affects these. These mostly come down to added effects during the use of your tools. One in particular kept coming back and gave me a boost in my overdrive state. It was a short window to use it, but you could make up a lot of time with it. The thing about all this is, more than most roguelikes, run abilities can allow you to power yourself through a situation; all of these do come back in some small way to skill. Thankfully, there is a difficulty slider if you are struggling, but on the recommended difficulty, everything can come down to a matter of seconds, which could easily dissuade someone from even wanting to try.
There is something to be said about after beating the game, or before if you want to branch out. There are a few additional modes and multiplayer on offer to take the game beyond the trapping of the main experience. By the point I had reached these, I was burnt out, but the scenarios offer a slightly different take on narrative if you want, though. It was around this point I felt I came, I saw, I conquered, and now it was time to move on.
Verdict
Star Wars: Galactic Racer, at the very core of its experience, has a solid racing game. Driving the limited vehicle selection is fun, and most of the tracks are well designed with enough personality to get you through. Then you put this roguelike loop on top of the experience, and everything goes haywire. A run can be perfect for 3 hours, then you veer into a wall on one course, and all that progress is undone. This also makes the technical gripes I have all the more pronounced because there are moments you crash for, like, no reason, or one bad attempt to slipstream ends in a forfeit. It’s an interesting idea, but to quote Game Dev Tycoon, Racing and Roguelike are not a good combo, and it hurts the whole thing overall.
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Reviewed For PlayStation 5, also available on Xbox Series X/S and PC
Developer: Fuse Games
Publisher: Secret Mode (with Lucasfilm Games)
Release Date: October 6, 2026
Pros
+Interesting track design, organically including elements from the franchise.
+Certain hazards are well implemented throughout maps.
+Racing controls feel like a combination of several classic arcade racers.
Cons
-Fairly limited vehicle choices overall.
-bland narrative with yet another generic human to play as.
-Several in game elements can work against you such as the camera when coming off of a jump.
-The roguelike system, while offering some interesting abilities, is predominantly lackluster.
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Star wars: Galactic Racer
