Star Wars: Galactic Racer is Just Like Burnout in a Galaxy Far, Far Away
After playing Star Wars: Galactic Racer at SGF, it is clear Fuse Games is not simply reviving Star Wars racing nostalgia, but building a fast, aggressive, story-driven arcade racer with real character inspired by Burnout.
Star Wars has always had speed baked into its identity, from trench runs and speeder bike chases to the sheer sensory overload of podracing. Even so, it has been a long time since a Star Wars racing game felt like a major event. After trying Star Wars: Galactic Racer at SGF, that wait suddenly feels a lot more worthwhile.
Developed by Fuse Games and published by Secret Mode, Star Wars: Galactic Racer is a high-speed racing adventure set in the lawless Outer Rim after the fall of the Empire. The New Republic is still trying to rebuild, the galaxy’s criminal underground is thriving, and a new obsession has taken hold: the Galactic League, an unsanctioned racing circuit where syndicates back pilots, rivalries turn dangerous, and every race feels like it could end in a wreck.
What surprised me most from checking out the game in-person is just how fleshed out the world feels. There are characters with backstories, NPCs chatting around garages between races, and a third-person mode for walking around the fully-explorable base camps. It's not just a simple arcade racer, even though it has all of those core features in there as well.
In the game, you play as Shade, a talented pilot pulled into the League by Darius Pax, a veteran mechanic and racing enthusiast trying to legitimize a sport that has become increasingly dangerous under the influence of Kestar Bool, the League’s reigning champion. The campaign appears to be built around more than just winning events. There is a clear rivalry, a cast of racers and mechanics, and a real attempt to make the racing circuit feel like a corner of the Star Wars galaxy worth exploring.
My favorite bit is that during races, you can absolutely drive aggressively if you want. That means slamming into other vehicles, watching them explode when they collide with walls, and even having them yell at you angrily for your lack of proper etiquette. The crashes and explosions, as well as the blistering sense of speed, are where the Burnout DNA is most evident.
A lot of former Burnout and Need for Speed talent worked on Galactic Racer, and that lineage is immediately evident. This is not a restrained or overly technical sci-fi racer. It is aggressive, readable, and built around that intoxicating feeling of barely keeping control while the world blurs around you. Vehicles scrape through corners, ramjet boosts push you into dangerous territory, and the tracks feel designed to reward confidence without completely forgiving recklessness.
Podracing, unsurprisingly, is a major highlight as well. There is a specific fantasy attached to podracing that is difficult to separate from Star Wars history, and Galactic Racer seems to understand that. The podracers feel loud, unstable, and thrilling in the right ways. They are not just included as fan service; they feel like a natural extension of a game built around danger, speed, and barely controlled machinery.
When Galactic Racer is at full velocity, weaving through hazards and trying to hold a line while the track collapses into chaos around you, it captures the exact kind of energy that made the idea of Star Wars racing so appealing in the first place.
"We always play to our strengths. We've got a certain sensibilities of how we like to make games. I'm sure if you've played any of what we've worked on that DNA is going to be present here, as it is in everything we do.
And that's one of the things that the studio is based, that mutual understanding and long history of shared love for certain types of mechanics and experiences around thrilling, fast arcade racing games."
- Creative Director Kieran Crimmins, in an interview with IGN
The campaign structure also appears more ambitious than a standard arcade racing tour. Galactic Racer uses a runs-based campaign built around a Galactic Tour split into three acts. Players move through a sequence of events across different planets, with races, eliminators, field tests, and mystery encounters shaping each run. Routes can change, rewards matter, and failure can cost League Entry Tokens. Lose too many, and the tour ends, though certain forms of meta progression carry forward.
That structure gives the game a roguelite-adjacent feel without turning it into something unrecognizable as a racing game. After each event, players can collect rewards, install upgrades, equip parts, apply abilities, and refine their vehicle build.
"We want every decision to matter, every upgrade to matter, every vehicle to matter, every race to matter, and like the runs-based structure allows us to do that, like we've never done in an arcade racing before.
Not only have you got to keep on top of the curve with your build and your skill and your track knowledge, but also you get to reset every time."
- Creative Director Kieran Crimmins, in an interview with TechRadar
There are still questions that will matter closer to launch. The full campaign will need to prove that its runs-based structure remains exciting beyond the initial novelty. Multiplayer will need to show whether the chaos holds up with a full field of players. The build system will need to feel meaningful without overwhelming the immediacy that makes arcade racing work. But the foundation seems great.
Star Wars: Galactic Racer launches October 6, 2026, for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC. After playing it, the biggest compliment I can give is that it immediately made me want another race. Once I got back home after the event, I booted up some Burnout 3: Takedown on my original Xbox to get my fix.
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