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In most open-world racing games, drifting is an option – you can tune your car or buy a specialized drift machine to slide round bends in a cloud of your own smoke, if you want to. In Japanese Drift Master, it is at the core of everything. This intriguing new racing game may not provide the multiplayer thrills of The Crew, Test Drive, and Forza Horizon, but it feels pleasantly unique in comparison to those big dogs of the open-world genre. You’ll be able to experience its recreation of Japan for yourself pretty soon, too, as JDM has just locked in its release date.
I covered Japanese Drift Master last year because it immediately stood out to me as something unlike those aforementioned predecessors. While the general approach of ‘pick location, recreate it in a massive open-world, fill it with desirable cars’ remains true in JDM, you won’t be stuffing your garage full of Bugattis and Ferraris. Everything about it is as authentically Japanese as possible, and everything feeds into the country’s drifting culture.
That means that it’s Japanese cars only. At launch, officially licensed vehicles from Mazda, Nissan, and Subaru will be available to drive, but developer Gaming Factory says it’s “not done” with announcing new manufacturers and models just yet. Naturally, you’ll be able to tune and customize cars too.
As a single-player game, a lot of attention and effort has gone into the narrative of JDM. You play as Touma, “a Polish driver who dreams of making a name for himself on the local street racing scene.” His Japanese friends help to get him established as a racer, but there will be fierce rivalries, romance, and drama on his quest to become the top dog in the fictional Japanese region of Guntama.
While overworld events and races will of course progress the story, a lot of the narrative grunt comes in the form of an original, hand-drawn manga. “Each time the player takes part in an event, pages of the comic book will lead them in or build up the narrative for what’s next to come,” Game Factory explains.
With 250km of roads and recreations of Japanese landmarks like Himeji castle, Guntama looks like a stunning playground for all this sideways action. Despite its rich car culture and natural beauty, Japan has amazingly never been featured as a locale in an open-world racing game, so far as I can recall anyway. Thankfully, JDM is going to bring that streak to an end.
If you want to dive in, you can do so right now thanks to its Steam demo. But the wait for the full game isn’t going to be a long one, either.
Japanese Drift Master will be released on Wednesday, March 26. It’ll be available on Steam, GOG, and the Epic Games Store.
If exploring massive, beautiful locations is your thing, check out some other amazing open-world games that we recommend. To see what else is on the horizon, our upcoming PC games guide is the place to be.
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