Speed Crew: Indie Game Review
Grab your wrenches and tires, the new crossplay indie game Speed Crew drops you in the pit for a battle of who has the family crew.
Speed Crew is a multiplayer, action, simulation game about a pit crew climbing the ranks and beating their rival, Dominion Toretto. You’re not racing the cars, you’re helping the racers win. By doing so, you rank up on the scoreboard.
Speed Crew is the first video game released by Wild Fields, a game developer company based in Ukraine.
The story of Speed Crew is a parody of Fast & Furious from a different angle. Instead of competing around the track…er, street, there’s a pit area where the cars go to be repaired. The crew starts small with just the guy with the mustache, we’re going to call him Mustache — I don’t know his name. And a girl with an afro, let’s call her Fro. Mustache and Fro are talking to the OG (original gangster) pit master. Let’s call him Grandpa. After playing this for 10-plus hours, I still have no idea the names of the crew. Grandpa bursts into the room and says he knows how to unscrew a tire just by looking at it. This is the running gag, they all want to learn the trick. He promises to teach the crew. But soon, they’re challenged by Dominion Toretto to a pit crew showdown. The crew is assembled and challenged to win at least third place during each race. If the crew falls below third place, they won’t be able to get to the next level. Let’s be for real, who doesn’t want to be number one and beat Toretto? The game is versatile because it can be played solo or multiplayer. It’s a bit more difficult to be first while playing solo — still possible.
By this point, I know you’re saying, ‘Overcooked, but with cars?’ Yeah, if you want to equate it to that. The difference between Speed Crew and Overcooked is the single-player feature. In Overcooked, when playing solo, you get another character to control. For me, it makes it harder to play. During Speed Crew solo play, there’s one character to control. The controls include dash, up, left, right, and diagonal in any direction. The game can work with a keyboard or controller – I play with an Xbox controller. The movements are satisfying. They make sense, the dash has a few frames of a cool-down. When tires or jacks are lying on the floor, you can’t walk through them. Getting stuck on the objects in the game adds to the frustration and authenticity of playing a top-down game. The tasks increase as the levels get more difficult. Starting, the cars need a tire change and body damage. Then we get to more tedious tasks like filling a gas can, fixing a transmission, and fixing and replacing the tire, and the tools to do these jobs change. This happens while the environment changes. Things are catching on fire, lightning strikes, and holes filled with lava appear. Replacing the tire involves grabbing the jack to lift the car, picking up the wrench, taking off the tire, grabbing a new tire, putting it on, using the wrench to secure it, and removing the jack.
Phew! That sounds like a lot, but it’s a quick task. Fixing body damage, removing trash from the car, changing a tire, and fixing transmissions have multiple steps. Filling the gas can from a stationary pump evolves into dragging the gas fuel pump around to each car. Then making sure the tank doesn’t overfill because it’ll cause a fire adds a layer to the gas task. When the tools change it’s hard to adapt. Unscrewing the tires, there’s a wrench until the second or third level, now it’s a tire machine. It does it faster, still causing panic while looking for the handheld wrench. Speed Crew has simple mechanics, the difficulty comes from completing the tasks – easy to pick up, challenging to master. Difficulty increases when more people are added. There are slots for three extra people, four in total.
Playing by yourself, you know exactly what needs to be done. Adding extra people, you get more things done, and a better score you can get. But there are more hands in the pot! That means, more people trying to complete the same task. More people can get hit by the cars, might as well be playing by yourself. Oh yeah, you can get hit by a car and have to wait a few seconds to respawn!
The game evolves from 1970 to the early 2000s. Some characters are unlocked later during certain years, it shows in their outfits. The avatars look like an expanded version of the Magic School Bus. Black, Brown, White, old, young, you name it.
There are two art styles in Speed Crew. The first one is a monotone geometric paper cut-out style for the cutscenes. The second is opposite from the cutscenes. It’s a top-down, 3-D, cartoony, colorful art style for gameplay.
That could be a more color-blind-friendly scheme for gameplay. Items are highlighted while standing next to them and that’s very helpful. There is a bit of contrast with colors, but not enough to let it stand out. The graphics are great for any resolution. Since it’s an art style that doesn’t get better or worse with the resolution is dropped, it won’t feel like you’re missing out on crisp graphics. I think that’s due to the cartoony nature of the characters.
The design is very smooth. There doesn’t seem to be a lot of texture, more so design details. On the bench, we see lines indicating it’s made of wood. All in all, the bench is the same texture as the car, the transmission, and even down to the wrench making the design smooth.
The user interface is simple – this makes it good. The cars have time limits on them. If it takes too long to repair a car there’s a penalty. The meter in the left corner shows how much time is left on a car, plus what needs to be repaired. The diagnostic machine reveals what needs to be repaired. In some levels, where you have to move the diagnostic machine around you don’t know what’s wrong with the car. There is a slight tell. If the car needs a tire, when I bring the jack over it outlines where it goes, I can start fixing it without using the diagnostic machine.
The leaderboard is mostly in the center of the screen, displaying which place the crew is in. It updates the more cars are repaired. Also, there’s a time in the left corner. This game is crossplay between consoles and PC. During character selection, beneath the customization, the keyboard or controller symbol indicates the platform of the player.
Speed Crew is a game that can be played all of the world. It translates into 12 languages, Mandarin, Cantonese, Portuguese Brazil & Portugal, Korean, Japanese, Italian, English, German, French, Spanish, and Ukrainian.
The music in Speed Crew is jazzy. During the cutscenes, it evolves from decade to decade. In the 70s, the music is funky jazz. The 80s is more electronic and synth-wave with a hint of jazz. It sounds like the same soundtrack adopted for the period. The menu music feels like a rave-lite song. There’s a bit of build without a heavy no beat drop, but still a fist pumper. During the 90s is a heavier rave feeling with more bass. The soundtrack has study background music potential.
Due to the competitive nature, multiplayer, and timed features in-game, it has a lot of replayability. I’ve restarted this game about three times now. I want better scores and faster times. Speed Crew is a party game. It’s easy to pick up and start playing low entry-level, and minimum complicated tasks. This game's mechanics, features, and style are easy. The difficulty comes with completing tasks and working with other people.
I enjoy this game, I like the feel, the haptic feedback, the art style, and the ease of playing it. It’s a great game to turn on and start streaming, playing in Discord with friends, or playing online with people. I’ve been forcing my friends to play with me. Sometimes we play via Parsec or each has a copy of the game. This game is an 8/10 for me. I’d like to see more accessibility features in the future. The game is available now for $19/.00€19.50/£16.75 on Steam, PlayStation, Switch, and Xbox.
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