Space Ribbon

Genre: Futuristic Racing

Players: 1-4 Competitive (Local Split-Screen)

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Review:

Space Ribbon a Futuristic Racing Game that has players racing various cars on a ribbon in space. At times, the ribbon being is spit out by a giant, cartoony animal head.

The visuals look okay on a technical level, but aesthetically it’s a really odd mix of generic old-fashioned vehicles, surreal spacey visuals, and… well, the giant cartoony animal head.

The game’s tracks are procedurally-generated, which is a nice touch, although this brings with it a different problem – tracks have no real personality to them, and there dosn’t seem much challenge provided by them – no hairpin turns, no sudden surprising shifts in width or anything like that.

However, the big issue this game has is its drafting system, which gives cars a boost if they follow in the path of other cars. The problem is, it is seriously overpowered here, probably to make up for the lack of variety and difficulty in the tracks themselves. Cars are constantly rubber-banding as they catch the drafts of the cars ahead of them, and actually getting in front of the pack is guaranteed to only ever be a temporary thing.

There are some interesting ideas in Space Ribbon, but many are fundamentally flawed, and they don’t really coalesce into a cohesive whole. If you want a racing game on the Switch, you have better options.

tl;dr – Space Ribbon is a futuristic racing game where you’re racing generic cars in space on a track spewed out by a giant animal head. It’s… um, unique, but a lot of the original elements here are flawed and the game just doesn’t come together as a whole.

Grade: C-

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