jAggy Race Review

This little game with an interesting name, jAggy Race, is a racing game in little more than theme. This "racing" game actually has much more in common with physics games than it does with racing games. That said, speed is an important component of the jAggy Race experience. Players must navigate their way through a world of nausea inducing physics from race track to race track in a battle against a persistent count down.

Like most racing games, jAggy Race is split up into separate tracks. At least, to call them tracks is the easiest way to explain them. They don't resemble any track seen in any other racing game by a long shot. The tracks in jAggy Race are seen from an isometric point of view, and they are essentially completely vertical. Imagine how the tracks in most racing games are laid out, flat with right and left turns and the occasional hill, bump, or incline. The tracks in jAggy Race are like one of those tracks, only rotated 90 degrees and standing on one end. However, the player's car is still oriented the same way and drives on a razor thin edge that is only as wide as the car itself.

The challenge in this game is not to stay on the narrow track (the car automatically stays lined up on the track), it is to battle the physics pulling at the car and to guide safely around treacherous drops and jumps while avoiding things like giant saws and brick walls. The player controls the direction the car travels in, and at what speed it does so. They can also make the car jump with the tap of a finger. With some finesse, the player can use the cars speed and inertia along with some well timed jumps to keep it moving forward and avoid obstacles. This is no easy task when the track's directions and even its gravity change in seemingly nonsensical ways. Lots of trial and error are necessary to learn the ins and outs of every track. In this way, jAggy Race becomes more about defeating the physics than beating the clock.

This is such an interesting game and the tracks are fun to drive, enigmatic as they are. While this isn't a racing game per se, it does have the draw of trying to get around a track at ever greater speeds. The physics are a bit unpredictable at first, but this is mostly because each track is so different from the last that is seems a whole new set of physics must be at play. jAggy Race is fun but it's certainly not for precision drivers.