Remember DRAG from Orontes Games? A while back in 2021 they were acquired by iRacing and now the game has returned finished as the future off-road racing sim ExoCross. It has full Native Linux support still, which appears in great shape.
All players that purchased it when it was DRAG: Outer Zones automatically get ExoCross, as it just replaces the Early Access game. This was one of the most promising and exciting racing games I had played in a long time back in 2020, so it's great to see it finally out.
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From the press release: “We’re thrilled to finally be able to unveil the completed version of ExoCross to the world,” said iRacing president Tony Gardner. “ExoCross represents a bold and unique racing vision for us: a world built around exhilarating off-road racing with cars unlike anything our fans have ever seen. Our team has poured tons of hard work into ExoCross, and we hope everybody enjoys it as much as we do!”
Features:
- 4CPT physics: Fully simulated chassis and suspension components and a soft-body tire model create realistic weight transfer and understeer/oversteer.
- Slipstream and boosts: Put the power down in the right places to charge past your opponents, or slot in behind them to recharge your boost as quickly as possible.
- Three unique cars: Take the wheel of three distinct cars, each more challenging and powerful than the last.
- Dozens of circuits: Do battle on 19 distinct track layouts—each raceable in both directions—across four unique biomes.
- AI Racing and Championship Mode: Advance through six racing series, two per car, to establish yourself as the top driver in ExoCross, going into battle with challenging AI opponents in up to 10-race seasons. Just want to pick up and play? Pick any car and track combo you want and hit the track!
- Challenge Mode: Take on 48 unique challenges across all four zones and showcase your top speed against a global leaderboard.
- Online racing: Face off with global players in a mix of Challenges and circuit races, with player votes determining every car and track selection. When the community decides, will you have the skills to make the best of the rounds ahead?
The release has been a bit on the quiet side, with no Steam announcement even posted yet to announce the finished game has been released. Trying to play online just results in endless matchmaking too, since the player-count is currently low, which will hopefully tick up when more people realise ExoCross is actually out. Although, it's quite disappointing to only see matchmaking and no lobby support to easily just hook up with friends.
Pictured: ExoCross - captured on Linux
Aside from the above, ExoCross is a lot of fun and quite a challenging racer with the physics system. I do a fair amount of spinning off the tracks still, bringing back memories of playing the earlier versions when it was called DRAG. A well built racer with a nice mixture of tracks and the AI is pretty good to race against with a firm enough challenge to make it interesting.
I've been blasting through it attempting to get through the Championship Mode today, and it's thoroughly entertaining. Gliding around corners, wheel-to-wheel with AI as you smash the boost button to fly ahead. It feels really good to drive the vehicles in this.
You can buy it on Steam now.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
The release has been a bit on the quiet side, with no Steam announcement even posted yet to announce the finished game has been released. Trying to play online just results in endless matchmaking too, since the player-count is currently low, which will hopefully tick up when more people realise ExoCross is actually out.
Oof. Apparently the text is too small for the green tick, too, so no marketing help there.
Not telling anyone about it, so only having 45 concurrent users of your multiplayer game on launch day doesn't seem like a super successful strategy.
benstor214 Jul 23
benstor214 Jul 23
P.S. I found this (mildly disturbing) image by searching “Four Contact-Patch Traction”.
Spoiler, click me
Mountain Man Jul 23
I remember the cars in the demo had neat physics modeling but were way too bouncy and squirrelly, and slid across the dirt like they were on ice, making them almost impossible to control. Has that improved?They behaved a lot like very powerful but very light open wheelers on loose dirt. Difficult to control, obviously, but not unrealistically so. This isn't an arcade off-road racer, even if it looks a bit like it should be.
I remember the cars in the demo had neat physics modeling but were way too bouncy and squirrelly, and slid across the dirt like they were on ice, making them almost impossible to control. Has that improved?
Since I played the original only a few weeks before this new release, I can confidently say, that the handling difficulty you mention has eased considerably. At least with the starter settings - beginner car and opt-out player-assist features in Settings>Gameplay.
That said, my sentiment aligns more with tuubi here - I personally enjoyed the challenge and learned to use a mixture of slowing down and handbraking in turns. Even though I have played only a few racing games extremely casually in my life and have only 4 h in this game, the start of the championship is not that challenging for me. But I believe enabling more players is good. The game presents me with several options to make it more challenging again if I want to curb-stomp the AI less.
The time challenges seemed still challenging. However, I can't use the previously honed skills anymore. I wonder if there is some new skill depth to reach for here.
Mountain Man Jul 24
I'm not asking for an arcade racer, but the cars in the previous demos seemed far too light with tires that didn't dig in like they should but lightly skipped across the surface instead.I remember the cars in the demo had neat physics modeling but were way too bouncy and squirrelly, and slid across the dirt like they were on ice, making them almost impossible to control. Has that improved?They behaved a lot like very powerful but very light open wheelers on loose dirt. Difficult to control, obviously, but not unrealistically so. This isn't an arcade off-road racer, even if it looks a bit like it should be.
This game felt and looked promising long ago. I just checked Steam reviews; doesn't sound like there is enough to do in the game to justify the cost at this point.The driving looks fun, but I agree that the price is too high for the content currently.
Maybe it's aimed at the competitive online racing crowd? Would make sense, seeing as it's owned by iRacing now.
I'm not asking for an arcade racer, but the cars in the previous demos seemed far too light with tires that didn't dig in like they should but lightly skipped across the surface instead.You might like the fact that since the demo, they've added optional traction control, ABS, steering assist and so on.
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