Sing it with me! Jay Is Gamers sing this song! Doo-dah! Doo-dah! Online race-track nine miles long! Oh the doo-dah day!... Okay the track in The Race, a multiplayer action advergame developed by Akestam.Holst and Plan8 for Swedish horse-racing board ATG, measures only about eight inches and the horses are the size of a nickel. But the chance to take on jockeys from all over the world should no doubt keep those camp-town ladies singing.
The Race starts with you being assigned one of six horses, each having various stats that will determine its performance in the competition to come. Once the other five slots are filled either with human or CPU competitors, the starting bell sounds... and they're off! There are several ways to move your horse forward. The most constant requires typing keys on the keyboard: a graphic is displayed that divides the keyboard into Red, Green, and Blue areas. When a color card pops up, type a couple of keys from the proper section to advance. Also, using the mouse to answer trivia questions and click popping-up carrots will give your nag a burst of speed. Finally, if you have your microphone enabled, you can make a specific cheer to drive your horse on. First to cross the finish line wins... and, should you have your webcam enabled, you just might see yourself in the photo-finish! Note: The Scandinavian Keyboard is slightly different from the QWERTY Keyboard, though the position of the keys generally remain the same. If all else fails, you can type [A]-[Z] for red, [G]-[B] for green, and [O]-[P] for blue. It's less complicated than it sounds.
With its steam-punk carnival aesthetics and quirky mechanics, The Race is one of the most unique casual game releases of the year. Naturally, it's more fun to play against other people than a computer, especially with international bragging rights at stake, but even against a computer, there's a air of breezy fun. The shiny surface gimmickry pulls a lot of weight to make up for the slightly-shallow gameplay, but whether you win, place, or show, The Race has charm to spare.
Um. o__o
For some reason, the game doesn't work for me. I can create my own race or prepare to race just fine, but the "start" button isn't working at all. I've tried Chrome and Firefox - do you need all 6 players before you can start? e__e
Tried on Firefox, Safari, and Chrome, but couldn't get past the spinning sunny loading thing in the center of my screen. I'm on a MacBook Pro - any tips for getting it going?
@Shazbot- i think you need to w8 for the race to start . probably there are time between each race.
It says multiplayer, I think you wait for the others to catch up loading.
It shouldn't load like that. I suspect a server load problem. We're looking into it. Sorry for the inconvenience. (Bjorn from Akestam.Holst)
Unfortunately the Red5 Media Server has gone down. We are trying to fix it asap. Sorry and thanks for the patience.
BR / alex, akestam holst
Unfortunately the Red5 Media Server has gone down. We are trying to fix it asap. Sorry and thanks for your patience.
Best regards / alex, akestam holst
and it's up and running again. sorry again, and happy gaming! Hup Hup!
/ alex, akestam holst
Does this mean that by writing about a game, I was able to crash a server?
JAYISGAMES REVIEWER ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKED!
hm... i am not too sure how the "sound" system works, lol. I guess the "pitch" is more important than the intonation, i have no idea.
i just end up clicking the carrot..
nonetheless, great-short-very-casual game!
Our keyboards are not Scadanavian, but Scandinavian. :P
The game is really only fun the first time, but I applaud the idea of the theme park styled game being made into a computer game. Although to truly fit the bill, it would have to be without user interaction and 100 % random.
And the Photo Finish feature is just begging for trouble. There's already a couple of pics of a half naked man in there, and it doesn't take more than one teen, or one person not realizing they said yes to leaving the webcam on for some NSFW pics to be taken.
What do you do when the WTF cards pop up? Nothing specifically seems to respond for them.
I got really bored when my pony was halfway across the board and the others hadn't moved yet, and then everything stopped moving. Is this a bug, or is this game just that boring?
Littleghost: As far as I can tell, the WTF cards merely signify that you have mistyped the color cards.
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