Racing is like any other sport.
The heart of the race is a bunch of silly doodles written by spectators on a chalkboard before the actual race begins. There are always 15 different front wing designs, 150 different ways to set the gears, and 15,000 possible engine failures, all factored into a nasty equation that determines whether you win or lose—usually by less than a tenth of a second.
On the other side is Mr. Hyde, who appears as soon as the tires hit the tarmac or the trail. The reason we all come to watch or listen is because once all the hoods are closed, a colorful human-shaped coating splashes across the carbon fiber canvas. For better or worse, on Sunday, much depends on those who put their hands on the steering wheel to lead the automotive connoisseurs to the promised land.
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Although the Steam Next Fest demo only offers a snippet of one season of chasing such dreams, Golden Circle – a retro F1-style management sim from Funselektor Labs and Strelka Games – already feels like it’s balancing the line between man and machine pretty well. While I enjoyed Funselektor’s previous two games, Absolute Drift and the equally brilliant Art of Rally, I wasn’t sure the developer’s signature mix of deadpan humor and challenging racing action would be a good fit for a more simulation-focused game.
You know, it’s hard to relax or appreciate the beauty of things when someone’s complaining on the radio that their tires are about to hit a cliff. However, Golden Lap retains many of the lovely furnishings while also offering an experience that will very much appeal to those armchair strategists who think they could do better than Toto Wolff if given the chance. In Career mode, you take the helm of an elaborate team modeled after a real-world racing enterprise, and are given a set budget to build it up by hiring drivers and staff, as well as building a car designed to make you a winner.
You do this by showing up at a mock track during Saturday’s qualifying session – such as Silverstone’s odd-world twin circuit Muttonchop or Circuit De Casino, which winds through a port that’s decidedly not Monaco. After switching to weather-appropriate tyres, you essentially have to do as many runs as possible – each run consisting of a proper push lap – in order to tweak your two cars in terms of power, aerodynamics and handling. How many adjustments you can make per pit stop depends on how many skill points your engineers have, and this and their unique qualities make them worth hiring, just like the drivers, whose talents are divided into speed and aggression values.
On Sunday, it all comes down to choosing the right tyre strategy for the conditions and laps to race, and coaching the drivers when to go all out, take it easy or keep the beat on tyre and fuel consumption. That being said, don’t let me give you the impression that Golden Lap offers an experience that’s too mechanical, which is often a danger with heavily simulation-heavy racing games like these. For example, before every race, some random attribute modifiers are applied to some drivers based on hangovers and the like. This has a negative effect and is clearly not fully realistic or something you’d want to draw inspiration from, regardless of what James Hunt might have done back in the day.
But rather than trying to inject some fun into what can otherwise be a rather dry racing game, it occasionally makes you realize how serious this strange race that we fans love to watch can get in a split second. Midway through a rainy race I attended at Muttonchop, one of the cars lagging behind in the race suddenly crashed. Unlike other crashes I’ve experienced before, this time there were no yellow flags, but red flags. Amid the cacophony of engines, a message popped up that read, “Oops, Gustavo Castro crashed! It’s bad!” The game didn’t provide any updates after the race was paused, with an uneasy silence broken by the steady downpour and occasional thunder.
Then, the green flag flew, and we were off again. At the end of the race, another notification popped up. “Gustavo Castro has failed to recover from a crash. They died.” The driver was then replaced for the next race, with the game noting that it was a tragedy but “it’s a circus and the show must go on.” Others might see it differently, but the right amount of humanity and cold, machine-like dissonance in this minimalistic sequence of events made me feel like motorsport, especially in the past, had a disturbingly perfect response to these once-frustrating shocks of routine.
Golden Lap is just such a game. Sure, those who really crave hardcore simulation games might find its mechanics a bit simple, but that’s not really what it’s about. As conveyed by the minimalistic yet unique art style in which it renders its track maps and weather effects, it aims to keep things simple, which is often what you have to do when you want to capture the essence of something.
It cuts through the fluff, paints a genuinely lovely picture of racing’s past, and frankly, after playing the Next Fest demo, I can’t wait to play more of the full game once it’s released.
Golden Lap is currently scheduled to be released on PC in 2024.
