The dark horse of Steam Next Fest is a gorgeous open-world racer inspired by Initial D

Japanese Drift Master
(Image credit: Gaming Factory)

澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Steam Next Fest's surprise breakout is Japanesꦕe Drift Master, an open-world racing game that takes some serious inspiration from Initial D, and after spending some ti꧃me with the demo it's easy to see why.

Japanese Drift Master puts you in the driver's seat around the roads of a rural tourist destination in the mountains. As the name implies, there's a big focus on drifting. Tap the handbrake and your rear end will just kick right out, challenging you to collect as many points as you can - there's even a Tony Hawk-style combo system and balance meter to encourage you to stay on𒐪 the road.

The starter car is called the "Toyoni Hachi" - a fictional name, but there's no mistaking the silhouette as anything but that of the Toyota AE86, the central car in the uber-popular street racing manga and anime series Initial D. While JDM doesn't have the license, from the setting to the car selection it's clearly that it's thoroughly inspired by the classic series, and - outside of a Japan-only Sega arcade series - this is likely the bes📖t Initial D video game we're e🎃ver going to see.

I'm terrible at drifting in racing games, and JDM hasn't changed that, but even as I go careening into guardrails and oncoming traffic it still feels🐓 sublime to play. The demo supports several racing wheels, but even on a standard Xbox gamepad there's a terrific feel to the cars that perfectly splits the balance between arcade approachability and genuine depth.

The demo available on is pretty robust, too, letting you travel around a sizab🦹le section of the game's openꦫ world and try out a number of different events, from speed-driven time trials to score-based drift challenges.

It's already proven a hit - the demo is the second-biggest thing in Steam Next Fest according to the store's '' metric, second only to the 澳洲幸♔运5开奖号码历史查询:Dark Sou💦ls-meets-Valheim hit Enshrouded.

If you're looking for more of the 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:best Steam Next Fest demos, you can follow that link for a breakdown for some of our top favorites.

Dustin Bailey
Staff Writer

Dustin Bailey joined the GamesRadar team as a Staff Writer in May 2022, and is currently based in Missouri. He's been covering games (with occasional dalliances in the worlds of anime and pro wrestling) since 2015, first as a freelancer, then as a news writer at PCGamesN for nearly five years. His love for games was sparked somewhere between Metal Gear Solid 2 and Knights of 🅺the Old Republic, and these days you can usually find him splitting his entertainment time between retro gaming, the latest big action-adventure title, or a long haul in American Truck Simulator.