A few weeks ago, I happened to come across a site promoting an upcoming new mobile game called Drift Girls. On paper, it sounded like my sort of thing — a combination of dating sim and arcade driving mechanics — but I was wary of it for being on the mobile platform, primarily because playing driving games with a touchscreen suuuuuucks.
Regardless, I signed up to be informed when it was available (and to be in with a chance of winning some in-game goodies when it launched) and I was pleased to see this morning that the game had apparently launched either last night or early this morning. So, with some trepidation, I decided to fire it up and take a look.
And… and… well, it’s good. Really good, actually.
The basic structure is similar to most other free-to-play gacha games out there, since those are a proven model for profitability, expandability and social features. In this case, the things you’re collecting, fusing, evolving and upgrading are cars and car parts, and as usual there’s more than a slight element of “gotta collect ’em all!” to the gameplay — though personally speaking, I find collecting things like cars somewhat less compelling than collecting characters, so I feel far less “guilt” in this game when sacrificing things I don’t need to level up the things I am using.
There are a few twists, though. Firstly, unlike some past street racing-themed free-to-play games that didn’t even bother to depict the races — yes, this is a thing that actually happened, and several times, as I recall — Drift Girls has some really rather lovely-looking 3D racing sequences that make good use of the limitations of touchscreen-based mobiles to provide an enjoyable, snappy experience that rewards skill as well as making the numbers on your stat sheet go up.
The control scheme works because it doesn’t expect you to do too much. All you have to do is rev your engine at the start line, preferably so it’s in the green area of your rev counter to get a Perfect Start, and then press and hold one of the two directional “drift” buttons when you reach a corner. Timing your drift appropriately will increase your speed through the corner as well as earn you nitro boosts, which can be either triggered for a big speed boost or saved until you finish for some bonus monetary rewards when you finish the race. That’s it, essentially; the challenge comes from increasingly complex courses and increasingly unforgiving opponents, so you’ll need to improve both your own skills and your car’s stats in order to progress beyond a certain point.
Here’s where the dating sim aspect comes in. Shortly after the opening, the game presents you with three eligible young bachelorettes and invited to spend some time with one of them. You can take the girl on dates or buy her gifts to increase her affection, and higher affection means that she provides you with more significant bonuses as well as some other… benefits. Yes, if you max out her affection, you can shag her… I’m sorry, “take her on an overnight date”, which, if you pick the right place to take her, will confer on you a long-lasting 100-point stat bonus, which is significant in the early game.
Mechanically, then, the girls are “equipment” of a sort, but the developers have actually bothered to put some effort into the writing, with each girl having a distinct personality, a backstory that she gradually reveals as you get to know her over the course of a few dates, and her own set of reactions to various in-game events such as winning, losing, challenging particularly difficult races and all sorts of other things. You’re even rewarded for each of these events that you see, even if it’s only a couple of lines, so there’s incentive to stick with one girl and get to know her fully — though you can also be a bit of a player if you really want to, too.
It would be easy to dismiss Drift Girls as shallow fluff of the usual sort you see on mobile, and sure, there’s a certain amount of the usual free-to-play stuff going on — energy bars, premium currency, that sort of thing — but like many of the other actually good free-to-play games I’ve had the pleasure of playing recently, the game isn’t stingy with rewards for non-paying players, and it’s overall a highly polished experience that is just plain good. Not “good for a mobile game”, but good.
If the premise sounds intriguing, then I recommend giving it a shot — and feel free to add me as a friend in the game under the ID “AstralFire”.
Grab it from Google Play or the App Store.
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