Going into Summer Game Fest, Star Wars: Galactic Racer sat somewhere in the middle of my radar. Not at the top, not forgotten either — just kind of there, a game I figured I’d check in on and see what Fuse Games was actually doing with the license. I’d been burned before by Star Wars spin-offs that looked better in trailers than they played in practice. The prequel era of gaming cranked out a dozen of those. Some were great. Most were fine. A few were embarrassing. So yeah, cautious optimism felt like the right posture.
After spending time with it on the floor at Play Days, I have been thinking about its approach to racing nonstop.
Galactic Racer is the racing game Star Wars fans have been quietly asking for since Racer Revenge shipped on PS2 in 2002 and then largely disappeared. It’s pulling from that same arcade-racing DNA while building something with real structural depth underneath. This isn’t developer Fuse Games slapping Star Wars skins on a kart racer and calling it done. There’s a campaign here, a progression system with actual teeth, and a roguelike-ish structure that had me thinking about build decisions the way I’d think about a card game more than a racing title.
The Galactic League is a no-rules racing circuit in the Outer Rim, the kind of operation that attracts syndicates, gamblers, and pilots with nothing to lose. You play as Shade, someone with a specific grudge against Kestar Bool and their family, the current Galactic League champion who’s been quietly consolidating power within the League for his own benefit. But this is how I think Star Wars works best; it’s not a story about trying to save the galaxy. The stakes are personal, contained, and honestly more interesting for it.
“Galactic Racer is the racing game Star Wars fans have been quietly asking for since Racer Revenge shipped on PS2 in 2002 and then largely disappeared.”
Shade got some light customization at the start of the demo, like body type, helmet style, colour schemes, and cape design. Nothing that’s going to blow anyone’s mind, but it does enough to make the character feel like yours. The more interesting customization comes from your vehicle. You start with a beat-up landspeeder at the bottom of the competitive ladder, and the whole campaign is structured around building that machine up run by run.
The structure is where Galactic Racer gets genuinely interesting. The campaign is divided into three acts, each spanning a Galactic Tour across five planets: Jakku, Lantaana, Ando Prime, Sentinel I, and Derven Acos. Each tour plays out like a branching map — call it Slay the Spire by way of Star Wars. At each node you’re presented with a choice between two event types before advancing. Races pit you against the field. Eliminators are last-racer-standing situations. Field Tests challenge you to complete specific objectives in exchange for prototype gear. Mystery Encounters drop you into brief side-quest moments with new characters from the broader Star Wars world.
The branching is interesting and really makes you plan out how your run will play out. Choose to hit Field Tests, and you might unlock a prototype part that changes your vehicle’s handling entirely. Lean into Mystery Encounters, and you’ll pick up Favors, which are these meta-currencies you can spend in the hub area between runs. It really depends on what you are looking for in your vehicle build. Do you want better shields? More boost? It’s very customizable, and it’ll be interesting to see how much each run ends up differing.
“The structure is where Galactic Racer gets genuinely interesting.”
The racing itself is fast and chaotic in a way that feels right for this universe. You’re holding the right trigger to accelerate, the left trigger to brake, and drift by braking through a turn. Special abilities sit on top of that — the first one available is a shield that absorbs impact and reduces knockback.
You’ll need it, because the AI is very aggressive. These racers will deliberately cut across your line, bump you into walls, even delay off a jump to land directly on top of you. On standard difficulty, each race gives you three lives. Burn through them all, and you’re done, token spent. It keeps every race feeling like it matters even when you’re comfortably out in front.
The presentation was the other thing that really took me back instantly. The game is gorgeous. Racing across the dunes of Jakku with light hitting my speeder and the horizon having that orange haze that desert planets in Star Wars have, and every detail just makes you feel like you are in the world. The hub area, referred to as the Paddocks, is this smaller area that gives you just enough room to move around but also a place to upgrade gear, interact with NPCs, and prep your vehicle between events.
There’s real personality in the moment-to-moment stuff too. Starting your engine involves a quick-time event with real consequences; nail it, and you get a boost to speed and shields going into the first turn. Miss it, and you’re already playing catch-up. The banter between racers during a heat adds to the feeling that you’re part of a circuit with actual stakes and actual personalities rather than a generic field of opponents. Full voice acting throughout the campaign gives the story more weight than you’d expect from a racing spin-off.
I got to play around with multiple vehicle types: landspeeders, speeder bikes and skim speeders. To cap off my time was with an intense podracing race playing as Sebulba. Each vehicle type has its own strengths, but the landspeeders seemed like the jack-of-all-trades middle ground. Fuse Games is a developer I’ll be paying closer attention to after this. Secret Mode as publisher has been quietly putting out interesting games, and Galactic Racer looks like it could be their biggest profile release yet. The October 6 window is competitive, but if the campaign holds up at the length and quality the demo suggests, this has a real shot at standing out.
The Star Wars racing itch has gone unscratched for over two decades. Based on what I played at SGF, Galactic Racer is positioned to not just scratch it, but completely re-open that wound in the best possible way.
Star Wars: Galactic Racer launches October 6, 2026 on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC.
