Death Roads: Tournament

Death Roads: Tournament is an intriguing combination of a turn-based strategy, a card game and a roguelike as well as... a racing game. It was inspired by the Mad Max series and developed by the independent Polish studio The Knights of Unity.

Plot

Death Roads: Tournament takes place in a grim future. In 2056, most of North America has turned into a giant desert. The rich and the lucky few live a quiet, safe life in Prime One, a mighty metropolis run by an Artificial Intelligence. Their main entertainment is the titular Death Roads, a reality show whose participants take part in a crazy race from the west to the east coast of America. Though failure, and thus death, is abundant, the game is worth a hassle, as the reward is the right to join Prime One. We play as one of the drivers facing this deadly challenge.

Mechanics

Death Roads: Tournament starts with choosing a driver and a car; our choice affects our starting cards. Next we must choose a sponsor, determining our starting location. After doing so, the game proper begins. The player traverses a cast map, moving along branching roads filled with interest points, marking subsequent races, events or workshop visits.

During races, or rather road battles, there can be only one winner and all sorts of dirty tricks are allowed. Combat, during which the participants constantly try to overtake each other, is turn-based. By playing our cards we can fire weapons mounted on our car and perform various maneuvers - ram our opponents, avoid obstacles or overtake other vehicles. We must also remember to shift gears; by shifting into a higher gear we increase our speed and gain access to more powerful cards.

Between races we visit the workshop, making repairs and installing various upgrades and parts looted off wrecked enemy vehicles (such as new weapons, engines or wheels). We must constantly be on guard, as failure leads to a permanent death, after which we must start all over again (though we still keep everything we've unlocked beforehand).

Technical aspects

The visuals of Death Roads: Tournament make use of an easy readable comic book-like artstyle. The game's rock soundtrack constantly keeps the player going.