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Notmycar is doing donuts in early access

Hey Stampede, how bout a poem?

Quietly released on Friday, NMC Studios vehicular free-to-play battle royale shooter Notmycar launched into early access. It's immediately familiar stuff to anyone who has played any other battle royale, only there's just forty competitors, and it's somewhat harder for them to hide as they're all driving around in loud, heavily armed vehicles. After taking it for a spin for a couple rounds, I reckon that so long as this one keeps enough players around, it could grow into something special, but it's a bit rough around the edges now. Below, a trailer and some thoughts.

My immediate impression is that the game is - at least for the moment - well populated enough after the weekend to not make finding forty players an issue, at least in the solo queue. Damning with faint praise, perhaps, but after seeing so many other battle royale shooters crash and burn with barely enough players to fill a single match, it feels noteworthy. The car handling is nice, too, if made a little stuttery by occasional lag. There's a weighty, slippery feel to the vehicles, and while crashes into obstacles don't do damage, they can easily scupper you in a fight.

Cover image for YouTube video

My biggest gripe with the game is just a point of personal preference, admittedly. You can equip two weapons and switch between them at will, but everything in the game is a mouse-aimed roof-turret, almost as if you glued a generic FPS protagonist to your car. I'd have loved something a little more technical in the vein of Interstate '76, with a mixture of fixed and tracking weapons encouraging different styles of play. Still, there is some skill involved in lining up a shot in one direction while trying not to crash and make yourself an easy target, especially when you're being chased.

It's an entertaining enough bit of auto-shooting, and free to jump into, and is estimated to need another six months in early access. If all goes to plan, NMC intend to add more modes (including non-battle-royale ones), new vehicles, a larger map and support for more players, shooting for 75-100. The game will remain free-to-play. As a sucker for vehicular shooters and someone still mourning the Robocraft Battle Royale spinoff that never got off the ground, I've got my fingers crossed that this one gets to cross the finish line with all four wheels still attached.

Notmycar is free-to-play, in early access and out now on Steam. It's published by Skybound Games, and you can see more on its official page here.

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Dominic Tarason

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