16-Player Kart Combat: Obliteracers Released

Squeezing 16 people into one room for a few tracks of Obliteracers [official site] sounds somewhere between a right lark and sheer hell. It's a kart racer doing those kart racing things - driving fast around wacky tracks - but with a bit more of a focus on mayhem and carnage and other exciting nouns a destruction derby announcer might yell thrice. What's neat is that, on top of online multiplayer, it supports 16-player local play with folks use things like laptops and pocket telephones as extra controllers.

Along with race-o-racing, Obliteracers has modes and modifiers like Survival, where drivers simply need to be the last one standing. Oh, and it's got bots you can beat up, if you'd rather.

As this video demonstrates, Obliteracers can be played on any combination of keyboard, gamepads, on the keyboard of another computer, through tablets and phones by scanning a QR code and tapping at on-screen controller buttons, or on those black mirrors connecting through USB. That's not bad, that. I like that the Jackbox party games are flexible with controllers too. From my time running local multiplayer events, I can tell you that a bag of 16 gamepads quickly becomes a horrifying electronic rat king.

Obliteracers, which was previously known as Space Dust Racers, is up on Steam for £9.89. Here's the launch trailer: