Slotz Racer

Slotz Racer is a fantastic virtual version of all of the fun you had as a kid with a slot car track. With up to 4 players at once on the same screen using a great innovative control system, and over 20 tracks to race, it's a load of fun. Also included is a functional, if a little less than friendly track editor.

Slot car racing is simple racing fun. The controls are traditionally simple in slot car racing. Those simple controls are very well implemented in this game in either the on/off format or the slide to control version, both included in this game. As in any good game, this is easy to pick up and hard to master.

The game includes 20+ tracks ranging from the simple oval to the complex much more complex. Some tracks are unlockable as are some of the additional cars, as you win various trophies.

The game also includes great multiplayer capabilities allowing up to 4 players to play on a single device at the same time. This is done by assigning a corner of the screen to each player and allowing them control their car from there. This works surprisingly well though it locks the camera display into overhead mode.

Here's a video that shows you the gameplay:

[youtube BDJSErOkr6U]

But, let's admit it -- with a slot car racing track, building the tracks was at least half the fun, if not more. You now have all the spare track parts you could need. The track editor which is included in the app is fairly well done, though a little less than perfect. It's extremely difficult to make a good track editor. Creating a usable track editor on the tiny iPhone / iPod Touch screen is impressive. You may run into occasional problems. For one, it's really difficult to make the tracks match up properly once you've completed the circuit. There are guidelines that show up on the screen, but matching up to them can be difficult.

In testing, the track editor did go a little crazy a couple times on us and made it impossible to find where the track went -- it was off screen somewhere and we had scrolled way the other direction. Saving the track and returning seemed to re-center the camera when this happened.

But there's also the killer feature that really sets this release apart from many other racing games. You can email tracks you create to anyone else within the game. Doing so is as easy as selecting the email track option in the track editor and selecting an email address from your contact list. This sends a 5 character code to the recipient who enters that code to download the track. This works very well and is very quick.

Here's a short video that shows the track editor in action -- it's not the current version, but gives you a good idea on how to create tracks.

[youtube uMvgJv2XhLg]

Overall, Slotz Racer is a great game. It's a very casual and fun racing game, and very well made. The few issues we had with the editor are easy to get around and likely to be fixed soon. Good fun, cheap game, and a good value.