Trailblazers
Welcome to the Trailblaze Tournament! Get ready for high-speed thrills with an explosion of color in Trailblazers, the first-ever second-to-second co-operative arcade racer. Paint the track as you go to dynamically change the racing line, boost on your team's color and outwit the opposition in a sprint for the finish. The more you paint, the faster you can go! Trailblazers is an innovative co-operative racer with groundbreaking on-track gameplay. Racing in teams of up to three-versus-three, players paint the track to create the best racing line, then use that paint to boost up to insane speeds. Drive with flair and style to gain skill points and blaze your way to victory! Experience blistering high-speed action with up to six players online, or locally via split-screen for up to four local players with additional online or AI-controlled challengers.
Steam User 47
I love it. I love how it plays, I love the controls, I love how fresh the concept is, I love the aesthetics, I freaking love the music and the visuals.
What this is: a competitive team-based racing game (!) where you can strategically paint the track, and racing over your team's paint boosts you and nets you points. The team that has the most points wins.
What it also is: a freaking blast to play.
Everyone's been saying "Splatoon", and, sure enough, there's the competitive painting and stuff, but aesthetics strongly remind me of Jet Set Radio. I'm sure it's on purpose. Not just the Naganuma-esque music and Arcade-era-SEGA-ish visuals (to an extent; the game has a style of its own), but even the noises the characters make alongside the speech bubbles--I think it's a direct inspiration or a purposeful homage.
Either way, a blast to play, blissful to look at, and clearly a labour of love. 110% worth the price.
Oh, and it also has a Linux version too.
Steam User 18
This game is a unique one. The racing mechanics make sure that the gameplay doesn't get
old after a few races, and the mechanics also force you to work as a team, with one person playing as a "Heavy" Painter who trails behind, while clearing the opposite team's paint from the track, making a smooth, clean line for you to follow. There is also a scoring mechanic, where if you boost for *X* ammount of time, your boost will become supercharged, allowing the boost to go even faster. But the faster the boost gets, the more paint on the track you need to keep yourself going that fast. And when you are painting, the car won't boost, no matter what combo you had.
The Story kind of feels like a afterthought. There is so much potential for this universe, so much potential to make this something bigger than it is. Most people who get this want it exactly the way it is: A futuristic racing game, mixed with Splatoon. The graphics are nice, varied, shaded, and smooth. This game doesn't take a multi-thousand gaming PC to enjoy. The game hasn't once suffered frame-rate drops, missing textures, or game-breaking bugs. Although, That doesn't mean I didn't encounter any small bugs. There is one major one where the game does not save your resolution when you quit. There is NO vehicle customization.
The race customization is pretty bare-bones at the moment. I would think allowing users to create, design, and share their own tracks would really add some more replayability to the game's online, as you and your friends could load up a custom map and have a complete blast. And if someone makes a truly great map, it could be added to the official map pool so it could be shown to more people. And lastly, the music. The music in this game is amazing at fitting into the gameplay. While you can't listen to any song on any map, certain songs are locked to specific tracks, but some are just locked to the specific region of where the track is in the galaxy.
The game is ONLY for controllers, meaning you will either need 1) A Xbox One Wireless Controller, 2) A Steam Controller, or 3) A PS4 controller. The PS4 controller is a extra hassle, because on some PC's you need to install driver software just to get the PC to recognise it as a controller.
All in all, My rating(s) for this game are as shown:
Graphics - - - 7/10 (Subjective: Graphics are stylized to be like a cartoon)
AI Difficulty - - - 3/10
Gameplay - - - 7/10
Mechanics - - - 8/10
Story - - - 2/10
Backstory - - - 1/10
Polish - - - 8.5/10
Music - - - 9/10
Color Texturing - - - 9/10
Online Functionality - - - 5/10
Race Customization - - - 1/10
Character Customization - - - N/A
Car Customization - - - N/A
Overall, I would give this game a 5/10
Definitely wait for a sale for $15. This game isn't worth $30 in it's current state.
Steam User 21
Trailblazers is a beautiful mashup of Splatoon and F-Zero, a co-operative racer where teams win races based on points rather than just finishing positions. Stunningly presented and unique in its design, Trailblazers is a great game that is worthy of your time
I hear you all like bullet points, so here's a few:
Pros:
Beautiful cel shaded graphics that make Trailblazers feel like the best Sega Dreamcast racer that never was
The driving is great fun, feeling like a slightly lighter version of Wipeout or F-Zero
Solid course design with a fair amount of varied locales
Cross platform online multiplayer
Split-screen multiplayer
All multiplayer modes include a number of modifiers and game modes that change the core experience in interesting ways
Solid single player mode
A number of quirky and distinct characters to choose from
Core gameplay premise is inventive and great fun. It just works.
Cons:
Combos can be lost way too easily. Even lightly tapping a barrier can cause you to lose massive amounts of points
Single player is fun, but lacks a little depth
LIttle difference between the way different characters play in relation to one another
For a full review, you can check out my video below:
Steam User 11
Actually feels like the character you pick makes a huge impact on how you help your team.
Different ways to win, not only being fast.
Cars handle well.
Maps are great.
Very different type of racing game that you should pick up if your group of friends isn't sure what to play.
IMPORTANT - YOU NEED A CONTROLLER. also, getting a game started with your friend and then picking teams is kind of buggy, not even sure you can choose teams at all.
Steam User 7
It's kinda hard to reccomend this game. I love what it does right, but at the same time it does so much wrong. If you like racing party games, and have some friends for local games, get it! If not, it kinda sucks. theres no way to invite friends online, the cross platform feature doesnt work, and the game has gotten 0 updates since launch. If you want to play this online it isn't for you, but the game is still really good.
Steam User 5
SCROLL DOWN FOR TL;DR
Trailblazers is a pleasant throwback to the age of simpler arcade racers, but with a fresh gameplay twist. As it has been said countless of times already, it indeed is like a fusion between F-Zero and Splatoon, a combination which works surprisingly well.
Two teams, three racers in each, track painted with your color makes you go faster. You have one button for painting behind you, and one for using the paint in an offensive move. These simple mechanics create nice strategic choices. Do you leave a long boostline for yourself and your team in the next lap, or do you use all your paint to slow down the racer in front of you? This system is super easy to learn, but hard to master. Good controls and nice track designs completement the package.
You get a total of 8 racers and 10 tracks. While this is not much, you do get several variations of the tracks, like forwards and backwards. On the plus side, there are no microtransactions, no lootboxes, no season passes, no basic content held for ransom behind DLC. In this dark, dark age of gaming, something like this is a damn blessing.
The presentation a very pleasing cartoony take on vintage pulp sci-fi retrofuturism with a few modern twists. This is one of the prettiest Unity games out there for sure. No major performance issues either. The soundtrack is unique and top notch, somehow managing to be very chill and very speedy at the same time, like Sonic going mach 1 while eating breakfast and reading the newspaper on a sunday morning.
Time for the bad stuff. I once encountered a glitch that nuked my entire save file and settings seemingly out of nowhere. On most games this would be a crippling flaw that would not make me recommend it, but in this case it isn't quite as bad, because there isn't much to unlock to begin with. My second gripe is a more minor one. The scoring system can be really brutal sometimes, completely killing off your long combo if your vehicle taps the track even slightly. As a final gripe, the voice clips and writing in the story mode are kinda bad, but nothing unbearable.
TL;DR
Overall, Trailblazers is a lovely arcade racer with good gameplay, good controls and a pleasant presentation, with its biggest flaws being a lack of content and one savebug. Despite all of this, I fully recommend it to any fans of Wipeout, F-Zero or Splatoon. In the current absolutely terrible state of the games industry, a small solid game like this should be cherished.
PROS
+Good fusion gameplay
+Good controls
+Good tracks
+Cool vehicle designs
+Distinct style
+Chill soundtrack
+No lootboxes, microtransactions or season passes
CONS
-Not much content or things to unlock
-Might wipe your save file
-Writing and voices leave much to be desired.
SCORE: 7/10
Steam User 6
Trailblazers is pretty fun if you know what you’re getting into. This isn’t a precision racer, but the painting mechanics and focus on teamwork make it stand out from the crowd. If you just want to chill with a space frog and hop along the painted track, then Trailblazers might be right up your alley.
Want to know more? Check out my full thoughts as part of the ongoing Coverage Club series of indie game impressions on TechRaptor