Blitworks (@BlitWorks) announced that Slipstream, the outrun-styled retro racing game by ANSDOR (@ansdor), gets a free expansion called "blue hour" today on all platforms. The new expansion offers 2 game modes, 3 cars and 5 new tracks with their respective 5 music tracks.

Slipstream is a racing game inspired by the visuals, music, games, and cars from the late 80s and early 90s. It's built on a custom game engine, with an authentic retro feel and unique graphics. The soundtrack, drawing from synthpop and jazz fusion influences, sets the tone for a race across a variety of exotic locations from all around the world, including cities, deserts, forests, mountains and beaches. Drifting and slipstreaming mechanics add depth to the driving gameplay, and the result is a challenging and exciting experience.

The game has been in the making during 4 years by Brazilian solo developer Sandro Luiz de Paula (ansdor), who built his own custom game engine that recreates the sprite scaling graphic techniques used on 80s and 90s racing games to bring the real, authentic retro experience to modern hardware, taking advantage of the extra power to provide smooth, constant 60 FPS gameplay.

All the new tracks are set in real-world locations, more specifically in exotic or unexpected locations in Europe: Marseille, Pompeii, Transylvania, Granada and Edinburgh. Ansdor's skills have improved a lot since 2018 and he also added many new features to the Slipstream engine, and the new tracks make heavy use of them, like a fog system, a dynamic lighting system that allows cars’ headlights to illuminate the track in real time. The expansion looks like an early 32-bit game, while the original was more like a late 16-bit game. As a natural technical evolution, he wanted to try new techniques and do artistic experiments that weren't possible in the original.

On the music side, Effoharkay's goal was to maintain some consistency of the same synthy vapor OST but without relying on synth sounding instruments. Most of the songs were inspired by the eccentric electric club-ish racing tunes of Ridge Racer 4, Need for Speed, and Wipeout. He wanted it to be pulsing and driving and diverse, while not worrying about pristine production quality or structure.

Slipstream is available on Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 4|5 and Nintendo Switch and PC at a price of $9.99 USD / 8.99 EUR. The game will also receive native versions for Xbox Series S|X and PS5 soon!

Discover more video game news, release dates, previews, and upcoming games for Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, Windows PC, Steam, GOG & Epic Store by following @XONEHQ on Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest, or subscribe on YouTube. You can also download the free Xbox News app for Android.

Xbox Store: here