If you’re into Japanese tuner culture, familiar with the old days of illegal street racing, or just yearn for another Tokyo Xtreme Racer, you better check this game out. Night-Runners is an indie racing game by Planet Jem, where you buy, customise, tune and race cars on the highways of Japan.
It also has a lo-fi presentation to emulate the seedy, dingy video recorders that was around the 1990s to the late 2000s, with plenty of floating texts as its UI.
The customisation aspect absolutely rivals the like of Need For Speed from what’s being shown. There’s no licensed cars, but the body shapes and slightly altered names should evoke the spirit of the JDM heroes we know and love. Even cooler, the engine bay is fully rendered, so you can actually see the look of that performance part upgrade. There’s interior upgrades too, including the ability remove interior parts.
The game has been circulating on YouTube with select folks being able to try out a demo. Now, the demo is publicly available on Steam. So if you like cars and racing games, give the demo a try.