Anime-infused racers have been picking up some steam ever since Need for Speed Unbound made it possible to show that you could blend cool anime effects with realistic looking arcade racing, so it’s no suprise that others are following in their footsteps.
This is even more true for Screamer, a new entry to the racing scene that’s actually a reboot of an old classic that has a surprising amount of history that most gamers likely missed out on. Is Screamer any good? Find out more in our preview!
So, it turns out that Screamer is actually a reboot of a 1995 PC arcade racer that may have in part paved the way for the legendary Burnout franchise, the arcade racer known for realistic damage and insane crashfests.
Screamer originally borrowed elements from Ridge Racer, and maybe that’s why it never became a household name like its competition. By today’s standards, we’d call this “Ridge Racer from Temu” since people don’t call things an out right knockoff anymore.
In this reboot, racers are divided into two classes: There are Leaders and the leaders run the in-game teams. Leader class cars are harder to control but have stronger passive abilities, while their subordinates are simply called Members. The members are easier to pick up and play, but they aren’t quite as capable or as game changing as the team leaders.
Speaking of the teams, the racers are divided into car clubs. In this pre-alpha build, there are five factions/teams to choose from but only three of them are playable: The Green Reapers are lead by Hiroshi Jackson, and his car is called Shadow Alpha.
His car has the ability to gain a bonus boost while boosting, which makes him unbelievably fast if you’re good at utilizing your resources. Jupiter Stormers Industries are lead by Aisha Waghmare, and her car is called Dendrobium MK-00.
Her car has a defense mechanism that will save you from getting blown up or knocked out one time, which can help you keep the lead once you get it. Finally, the cutesy Strike Force Romanda lead by Ritsuko Imai, drives the Miseru GT-R, and her car has the ability to quickly gain sync when gaining positions.
This means she excels at closing the gap if she’s not leading the pack and she can easily jump from 8th to 1st.
While the leaders are strong, I found my favorite racer among the pack was Roisin Garrity, since her ability is that her attacks take less resources per use and she can chain use her whole bar if needed to quickly dispatch and explode other racers in her way.
Screamer utilizes a system called sync and entropy to give you boost and attacks respectively. Building up sync allows you to trigger boost, while using boost gives you entropy that allows you to dish out attacks.
This gives you a reason to use your boost early and often instead of hoarding it for a last minute blast to squeeze out a win, and instead encourages you to not only go fast but dismantle the pack as you work your way through it.
The result is a good mix of arcade racing with just enough hectic battle mechanics to make races feel fun and competitive without relying on rubber banding to artificially keep you competitive.
In the current iteration, there’s zero instruction and neither the twin stick drifting system nor the sync/entropy system are intuitive even though you can mostly figure them out from trial and error.
It also doesn’t help that boost has a mini game where you can hold the button and release in the gold triangle for a better boost when there’s nothing telling you that it’s a thing.
Screamer has a long way to go before it’s ready for release next year, but we’ll be keeping an eye on it and hoping that this build keeps updating so we can monitor the changes as they are released.
While there’s only about eight tracks in the playable build right now, they are varied from C tier to S tier in difficulty, and desperately want to show off more than they are allowed to show.
I’ve already noticed multiple spots where they clearly plan to have shortcuts and alternative raceways, so needless to say that while the base game is certainly promising, as it stands Screamer is such an early build that it’s hard to find much else to say outside of admitting that the core gameplay loop is solid.
We need to see a lot more before we can tell if it’s going to stand the test of time or not. It’s fun, but I’d also like to see them lean into that Initial-D element more so than just having cutesy racers driving futuristic looking stock cars and Anime smoke/effects from the pipes/tires.
Screamer is in development for Windows PC (via Steam and the Epic Games Store), Xbox Series X|S, and PS5 with a release set for 2026.
