Screamer, the new reimagining of Milestone’s first racing game with no connection to the 1995 original, has locked in a release date.
Revealed at the 2025 The Game Awards, Screamer shows off more of its cast. This is a racing game, but a character-driven one in the style of the games in the late 90s. We see here are some cinematic shorts featuring the racers, some speaking in Japanese.
Some of the English voices are familiar names. Troy Baker and Aleks Le take on leading roles in Screamer.
Screamer has cel-shaded anime-style graphics developed by Polygon Pictures. It is expected to have over 30 minutes of these anime-style cutscenes, which is basically one episode worth if Screamer was indeed an anime. Not a lot, but maybe enough in the context of a racing game.
Interestingly, the press release states Screamer’s setting to be inspired by “JRPG elements.” There’s not many car-based RPGs (CarPGs if you will), less so made in Japan that’s known in English-speaking racing game communities other than Racing Lagoon, so that’s interesting.
The story of Screamer will see players get involved in the world of illegal street racing tournament. Five rival teams, each with a leader and two members, have their reasons, to participate, and the campaign will explore this intertwining campaign.
In that regard, there’s no recent racing games to have explored a story of intertwining narratives, through Umamusume: Pretty Derby (which we argue is a racing game) comes pretty close.
Screamer’s earlier gameplay reveal looked rather lukewarm, but developer Milestone has since done explainers to demonstrate that this racing game has some sick tricks, from right-analog-stick-drifting to semi-auto gear shifting that those with hands-on experience compare it to the Active Reload system from Gears Of War. If a game has some funky cool mechanics don’t just hide it for later, let folks know! Scream it if you can.
Screamer (2026) will be out on March 26, 2026 for the PS5, PC and Xbox Series X|S.