Slipstream: Reinterpretation of classic arcade races by a Brazilian solo developer

Learning to make games and realizing that you can make a living from them

My name is Sandro de Paula from Brazil and I wanted to be a game developer since I was a child. I had my first real exposure to game development tools when I was 14, but it didn’t seem like a viable career at the time. There weren’t many opportunities in my country, so I decided to pursue other interests, like music and journalism. Around 2012, when the first wave of commercially successful indie games was taking place internationally, I was convinced that it was now possible to make it as a solo developer and started working, learning and experimenting more seriously. My first “real” project was a mobile runner pixel art game called Meow Sushi Nightreleased for Android in 2014, and then I started working on it slipstream soon after.

The Origins of the Slipstream

This may be unexpected, but the idea behind it slipstream started out as just a technical oddity. I had recently finished Meow Sushi Night and I felt like I understood how 2D graphics worked reasonably well, but I kept asking myself, “How did those classic racing games create a 3D perspective in pure 2D hardware?”. I did a little research and was immediately intrigued by the pseudo 3D technique, decided to try my own implementation and from there the project grew. I had previously played some classic racing games such as: OutRun, F zero and top gearbut it didn’t really become a passion until I started working on it slipstream. A lot of racing games focus on creating a realistic physical simulation of how cars work, but the racing genre also lends itself very well to a more stylized, expressive approach, and that’s the direction I’ve been trying to go. I wanted to give people the fantasy of a colorful global road trip OutRun did then.

The evolution of mechanics. What makes Slipstream a different arcade racer?

I think drifting and slipstreaming has always been essential to the game. The first demo I released in 2015 didn’t have either and the gameplay felt too simple and barebones at the time. Despite being the name of the game, the Slipstream mechanic wasn’t there from the start, but it was a natural adaptation. The ideas for both drifting and slipstreaming were inspired by OutRun 2006/Coast 2 Coastwhich was an attempt by Sega itself to modernize the gameplay of the original OutRun. I really don’t like manual transmission mechanics in old racing games, manual shifting in an unrealistic race car isn’t very fun so I never thought of using that as a mechanic, but the game still needed something the player could do besides accelerate and turn can do . Rewind was the most recent addition to the core mechanic and I think it was a good one, it gives the player a strategic opportunity to retry a hard turn or undo a crash. All the mechanics were added very naturally, I didn’t plan too much, I just tried things and iterated until it felt fun or satisfying.

The Slipstream soundtrack and its inspirations.

The soundtrack inside slipstream is a very distinctive part of the game. It was created by my friend and collaborator from the US, Stefan Moser, aka Effoharkay, who also did the soundtrack for mine Meow Sushi Night. The soundtrack was created alongside the game and therefore had a huge direct impact on how the game ended. At times I felt like I was making a game for the soundtrack rather than the opposite. The game definitely wouldn’t be the same without these songs. From my point of view it’s a mix of influences, from 80’s synthpop to 2010’s vaporwave and synthwave to jazz fusion and eurobeat. The soundtrack is a diegetic part of the game, it’s the music you play in the car while you’re driving, so it’s not made to fit a specific track or location, but to set the atmosphere and tone for that game as a whole.

“The music for slipstream was composed over the course of development, which was cool in that requirements, inspirations and references were constantly changing,” says Stefan. “In the beginning we were really into synthwave/synthpop, which was popular between 2009 and 2015. Then of course overtake and other classic driving games/sims were added. We ended up going into vaporware, eurobeat, jazz fusion, etc… The idea of ​​having a radio playing the music from the car made it pretty easy to think of the game as an album rather than a soundtrack.” Regarding on media references and inspiration, Stefan says, “I remember the hard hitters like drive and overtake, but I remember at the time trying to look closely at the art of composing for gameplay and feeling empowered by it. As for other artists, back then I was listening to a lot of Com Truise, Electric Youth, Jean Luc Ponty, Casiopea and many more.”

With a killer soundtrack and game mechanics that distill classic arcade racers into the modern arena I hope slipstream combines nostalgia and challenging gameplay for tons of fun – and it’s available now on Xbox!

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