Galactic Racer GBAtemp review

Galactic Racer isn’t trying to be a sci-fi racing simulator or an ultra-competitive racer. This is an arcade experience built around making you feel like the protagonist in a Star Wars racing adventure. You won’t spend much time fine-tuning every part of your speeder or worrying about the perfect racing line. Instead, the focus is on making quick decisions, using your abilities, and holding on while the track throws various hazards at you. The three main speeder classes each have their own feel: landspeeders are steadier, speeder bikes favor speed, and skim speeders reward momentum but take more care to steer. Podracers also become available later in the campaign, and in the extra modes for everyone that wants it.

The campaign is split into three acts, each built around a series of tours. In a tour, you travel between planets and choose from branching paths of races and other events, eventually working toward a final race. Your route matters as some events are safer, while others offer better rewards that could make the difference later.

The campaign uses a roguelite structure. Lose too many times and the tour ends, sending you back to try again. That can mean repeating races you’ve already completed and losing the parts and upgrades you collected during that attempt. Some unlocks carry over between attempts, but you still have to rebuild your run and earn your way back to the end.

There are three main ways to shape your speeder: parts, upgrades, and abilities. Parts act as powerful modifiers that can push your build in a certain playstyle. Upgrades improve your base stats. Abilities are tools you can activate during a race, and you can equip up to four at a time. These systems are easy to understand, but they give you enough room to build around the way you want to race.

The Force is Not With You

I played on Ace difficulty, one step above the standard setting and one below Champion. I raised the difficulty because the early races felt a little too easy on the default setting. Rubber-banding is noticeable: even if you fall behind, you can often claw your way back into contention. Ace felt like the better fit for me because I couldn’t coast through every event; I had to make use of my parts and abilities, especially in the high-risk elimination races.

Tour paths include standard races, elimination races, test drives, and character encounters. Elimination races add real pressure as you need to finish in the top three, or you lose a league token and risk ending your tour. Test drives are challenges like time trials that are more forgiving. You can’t lose the event outright, but you can miss out on its task-success bonus.

At first, I gravitated toward test drives because they seemed like the safer choice. I quickly learned two reasons to take the other events instead. The obvious one is that standard and elimination races pay out better rewards, which can help prepare you for the final event. The other reason is that the test drives can get repetitive. In Acts 1 and 2, they work as a clever way to teach mechanics like the Ramjet boost. But many of the early tests ask you to do the same task of using the Ramjet for a certain distance without crashing a lot. That’s fun the first few times. By my fifth attempt at a tour, though, the novelty had worn off, and I started choosing elimination races just to feel something.

I’ve Got a Bad Feeling About This

Galactic Racer can feel repetitive if you have to restart tours several times. There aren’t a huge number of planets, and although each has a good selection of tracks, they often share the same overall look. Individual tracks have quirks such as freezing temperatures, corrosive hazards, or lava, but I wish there were more visual variation between tracks on the same planet. More variety here would make repeat runs feel fresher. Some hazards and track lanes blend into the scenery which make it hard to navigate. I’ve crashed many times because I thought some debris was a ramp or I couldn’t find the tunnel entrances. Playing through a track for the first time feels like you’re flying blind. Thankfully, on repeat runs, you quickly start to recognize obstacles to avoid.

Readability aside, the environments are a treat to race through. Each planet captures the Star Wars aesthetic beautifully, and familiar locations like Crait and Tatooine feel pulled straight from the screen. The same level of detail goes into the characters and speeder models. My favorite way to play was in the first-person view. It is a little less competitively viable for some planets but the immersion alone is worth it.

Now This is Podracing!

The story gives you a reason to keep going, but don’t expect a grand adventure on the scale of Expedition 33. This is a contained story about a racing league in the Star Wars universe. As you progress, you meet familiar names, and an iconic character joins the story near the end of the first act taking on a surprisingly substantial role. As a fan of the universe, I thought the game found a good balance. It has fan service but it doesn’t rely on cameos alone to carry the story.

The racing itself has a satisfying risk and reward rhythm. You’re drifting through tight turns, managing boosts, and reacting to hazards while trying not to lose control. The story is ultimately there to support the roguelite racing loop, and that loop is addictive. Races are long enough to feel rewarding without dragging on. Upgrades can meaningfully change how you approach a run, so each attempt doesn’t feel exactly the same. I kept choosing an aggressive, speed-focused build, setting up my speeder so I could boost for nearly the whole race. When you’re deep into your run and have carefully built up all the upgrades and parts for your speeder, it feels so rewarding to fly by all the other racers.



Star Wars: Galactic Racer is messy arcade fun. It set out to make me feel like I was racing through the Star Wars universe, and it succeeds! The speed, the sound, the vehicles, and the familiar locations come together to make a racing game that feels at home in this galaxy. The roguelite structure gives the campaign a compelling loop, but repeated attempts do highlight how repetitive the game is. The test drives become monotonous, and the limited planet and track variety makes some runs blur together. I’d like to see more event types and greater variation between tracks. Even so, the racing is fun enough that I kept wanting to jump back in and give the next tour a shot

Game Trailer