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Incremental Retro Racing

Incremental Retro Racing

by Baardmoeder

★ 56%
Price N/A
Avg Players 0
Reviews 9
Released Jul 28, 2026
1980s1990'sActionArcade

Media

Video
Video
Video
Screenshot
Screenshot
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Screenshot

Drive progressively faster cars across procedurally generated tracks, earning stars that unlock new vehicles and performance upgrades in this retro-styled racer. With 70+ cars to collect and extensive customization options, the loop combines incremental progression with arcade driving mechanics, appealing to players who enjoy both idle progression and active skill-based gameplay.

About this game

Players, last 29 days

Peak 0 · Low 0

Daily peak concurrent players, sampled once a night from Steam.

What players are saying

▼ Not recommended 3 hrs
It’s an interesting mix, but one that ultimately lacks lasting appeal or a satisfying gameplay loop. You drive a car down a randomly generated road, earning stars by passing through checkpoints. Crashing into traffic or obstacles doesn’t damage your vehicle. Instead, it brings you to an immediate stop, after which you can simply accelerate and continue driving.

Staying on the road is easy because the tracks are wide and the handling feels solid. There’s also a timer that rewards you with extra stars at the finish line. The reward depends on how much time is left, but you can’t actually fail if the timer reaches zero. You simply miss out on the bonus stars.

After crossing the finish line, you move on to another random track. You can also visit the shop and spend your stars on a random selection of items. These include new vehicles with different stats, although the differences rarely matter. You can end up with a truck that has better stats than a race car. The only stat that really feels valuable is the amount of limited turbo, which lets you speed through a track and fully recharges between runs. Once you buy a vehicle, it’s permanently yours, and you can switch to any owned car directly from the shop, but bought cars clutter the shop screen and don’t have a separate garage. They’re also in default order, so if you have a favorite car, you’ll have to scroll through them for each new race.

The shop also offers general upgrades, such as better handling, extra turbo, randomized road colors, or a single chance to survive a collision. If you want to progress faster, it’s worth saving for upgrades that increase your star income, such as earning stars for overtaking or doubling all stars earned. Stat upgrades apply to every vehicle you own, so they’re always useful. Once you unlock a few of these upgrades, the amount of stars you earn after each track becomes quite generous.

The Double Stars upgrade is easily the most important purchase in the game. Without it, the progression quickly starts to feel like an excessive grind, as both cars and upgrades become incredibly expensive compared to the first few purchases. The first batch of cars costs around one or two hundred stars, but the second batch suddenly jumps to prices roughly five thousand times higher, with later batches becoming even more expensive.

The cars themselves are especially strange because most of them look fairly ordinary and don't offer noticeably better stats. Some are even worse than the starting vehicle, which I ended up using for most of my playthrough. Higher prices make sense for a few vehicles because they come with more turbo charges, but many others feel like expensive collectibles that exist only to give you something to spend stars on. Upgrades become even more costly, making it seem like you're barely making progress. Then you finally unlock the main star earning upgrade, and suddenly everything changes.

Car and upgrade prices continue increasing several times, eventually reaching absurd levels. By the second major price jump, the game had already started losing its appeal for me because I wasn't really seeing anything new. The tracks remain largely the same, aside from modifiers that you can unlock, such as different road colors, lane counts, hills, and other variations. Unfortunately, these modifiers also come with high price tags, just like everything else in the shop.

Another issue is the shop itself. Since the selection is random, you might save up for something only for it to disappear from the rotation. Buying cheaper items creates room for more expensive ones, which you usually can't afford. This happened to me with the Double Stars upgrade. I couldn't afford it when it first appeared, so I bought other upgrades instead. By the time I finally had enough stars, the shop kept showing the next level of the Double Stars upgrade instead, which was far beyond my budget.

I had to grind through several more tracks before the cheaper version finally appeared again. On the other hand, I was lucky enough to afford the next Double Stars upgrade immediately after buying the first one, and the difference was incredible. After a single race, I had enough stars to purchase nearly everything from the previous batch of cars and upgrades. Toward the end of the game, I also discovered that you can refresh the shop simply by returning to the main menu and loading back into the game.

That advantage only lasts until the next price increase. Nevertheless, at that point, the challenge becomes almost meaningless because the customization options let you create extremely easy tracks with wide roads, no curves, and very little traffic. You can practically hold the accelerator, drive in a straight line, and earn more stars than you'll ever realistically need.

Sadly, there’s no meaningful reward for buying the final item in the shop. There’s no special vehicle, achievement, or secret unlock. All you get is a simple congratulatory message, which makes the ending underwhelming after such a grind. The game's premium price isn't justified, particularly when the genre offers far better alternatives at a lower cost.
8 found helpful Steam ↗
▼ Not recommended 5 hrs
"My disappointment is immeasurable, and my day is ruined."

I finished the game in about 2 hours, unlocked all the vehicles and other things, and then played for a few more hours because I was curious how long it took to reach maximum stars ... but I'm never going to find out, because my save file suddenly disappeared and now I have to start all over again...

"70+ vehicles"; unfortunately, it felt like there were fewer, but I can't prove that because I don't want to start over. I decided to just delete the game; luckily, I didn't pay for it.(I won this game in a giveaway.)

The game itself was okay, but only fun for a few hours.

I don't know if I want to support this developer, because their other game has AI slop.
5 found helpful Steam ↗
▼ Not recommended 0 hrs
There are a lot of other better games to play while you're on the toilet... the price really doesn't help it either. No offence to the Dev(s).. I love the look but the Gameplay is really lacking here. It probably would've been better if it was just a regular racing game with upgrades.

Again, no offence. I want to commend the Dev(s) for making a game with no real technical issues... and the Retro look is nice. If they would implement deeper gameplay mechanics in their games... they actually might be a great Dev team.

I play some of it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9RDauCcXljc&t=8s
2 found helpful Steam ↗

Reviews are by Steam users, hosted on Steam.

Latest updates

Mac & Linux updates

7 days ago
Hi everybody,Just wanted to let you know I've updated the Mac & Linux versions with the extra environment as well. The environment comes straight out of a prototype for a M.A.S.K. trailer I've been working on using the same engine used for IRR. Please see the previous post for more info.I hope you have a good day!

Update: New Rock Tracks, M.A.S.K. prototype, and Turbo Turbo Kickstarter

18 days ago
Hi everybody,I've added an extra environment to Incremental Retro Racing. It comes straight out of a prototype for a M.A.S.K. trailer I've been working on using the same engine I used for IRR. M.A.S.K. is a cartoon and toy franchise from the 80's that some of you might remember. Unfortunately it seems I failed to convince Hasbro to turn the proposal into a real game. With games needing to make $1 billion revenue to be interesting and all that. But at least there's now this 1 minute M.A.S.K. Trailer:Turbo TurboSince I can't make M.A.S.K. without a license, I'm now trying to turn this into a more over the top co-op arcade experience that fuses the precision of on-rails shooters with the rush of retro racing. It's called Turbo Turbo and in addition to driving you also need to shoot at alien invaders. You don't have to do it alone though as you can play in local co-op as well!I'm currently running a Kickstarter for Turbo Turbo. Hopefully there are enough people out there willing to fund it. And since Turbo Turbo is using the same engine as IRR any new environments created for Turbo Turbo can be added to Incremental Retro Racing as well! So if you like what you see, maybe go check it out!It will be featured in the upcoming:ARC Arcade Racing Round upHigher Plain GamesGamer Section ShowcaseNew EnvironmentThe new environment is the rocky Mesa/Canyon landscape as seen in the M.A.S.K. trailer. It used to be very hard to drive with the rocks extending over half of the road but I decided to cut down on the difficulty since it seemed a little unfair. I like the idea of a special extra hard track though. Something like Fire Field from F-Zero back in the day. Anyway, since it features rocks all over the place it had to have rock music as well. But since IRR has mostly electronic trance-y vibes going on I decided to go with something in the industrial genre to make it fit better, but still leave a rock hard impression. The song is called Urban metal by Ksenia Nikolaeva.The new envi...

Linux support added

107 days ago
Hi everybody!I've just added Linux support for both the demo and the full version of Incremental Retro Racing.It's still experimental, but it should work for Ubuntu 22.04 or higher.Please let me know in case it doesn't run for your configuration, and please be sure to mention your OS version.Please enjoy!Baardmoeder

Posts come from Steam's official announcements feed.

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