Nightmare Kart Review (PC)

Nightmare Kart combines the classic arcade-like feel of a cheesy racing game with a thick coat of charcoal and gothic charm in an extraordinarily peculiar ode to the golden age of PSX. In an effort to resurrect the 4:3 aspect ratio and the thrill of duking it out over petrol-soaked asphalt, the Tim Burton-esque battler pours its heart and soul into all of the right sockets — and rather well, at that.

In any ordinary case, you would expect a love letter to old-school PSX racing to be wooden, mechanically inept, and just a tad behind the times, naturally. But, Nightmare Kart doesn’t aim to bend over backwards to traditional facets. Rather, it makes a solemn vow to reinvent the wheel whilst retaining the beating heart of what made Mario Kart and Twisted Metal the bashful bloodbaths that they were back in their respective teething eras. Oh, Nightmare Kart still feels like a tribute to the days of old, as does it often play like one, for that matter. Yet, there’s a lick of salt here that tastes fresh, satisfying, and just the slightest bit disturbing.

A tribute to Bloodborne at heart, Nightmare Kart plunges you into a dark and mysterious world in which the act of battling colossal machines built from steam flumes and copper is commonplace, and the fee to abolish involuntary conscription is paid through a currency built on vehicular combat and high-octane drifting. As a beast hunter in this world, you find yourself tied to the wheel against your will, with a dismal landscape to tread and a host of bosses to reduce to scrap metal.

Racing is just a small part of Nightmare Kart, as is the act of bolting around the circuit in a souped-up soapbox of bolts and projectile components. For the most part, however, it’s all about waging wars with the ominous ilk of a gothic civilization—a tapestry of foes that range from skeletal narrators to mischievous entities. And I suppose that’s where Nightmare Kart finds its place in the field: as a game that entertains the concept of high-speed racing, but, above all else, as an experimental horror that primarily relies on the vehicular combat aspect.

Unlike, say, Mario Kart—a series that is no stranger to banana peels and rocket boosters—Nightmare Kart prefers to embrace the track with bloody knuckles and a few extra teeth. The weapons and power-ups, for example, come in the form of shotguns and Molotovs, spells and droplets of blood, the latter being a potent tool for temporarily boosting your speed, naturally. Thus, we have the backbone that stabilizes Nightmare Kart. As a fledgling wheelman, you grace the asphalt, gather vials of blood, collect weapons, and essentially unleash hell on your opponents. It’s a simple setup, but one that is awfully satisfying to unravel, believe it or not.

While there isn’t much of a storyline to unpack here, Nightmare Kart does feature a sufficient amount of stages to carve through (fourteen, actually) as well as a handful of original bosses to obliterate. With each stage that you complete, a wall of text greets you, and a slither of context weaves into the plot to shed light on the overarching theme. It doesn’t give you a lot to write home about I’ll admit, but it does do just enough to hold your attention, if not with the introduction of a new driver, then with another setting to burn rubber in. And it’s the little things that matter most here, truly.

For a game that proudly wears its rigor mortis on its sleeve, Nightmare Kart feels great to romp through from behind the wheel of one of its twelve vehicles. Don’t get me wrong, it can feel awfully sluggish at times — but that’s sort of the point; it fits the time period and the core values of a PSX cult favorite. But for the most part, driving, battling, and generally skirting around the beaten cobblestone paths of a gothic underworld is a tremendous amount of fun. It might not feel slick or even the least bit modern, but again, that’s sort of what it wants to achieve.

While the campaign is severely lacking in depth and award-winning character compositions, Nightmare Kart does come clean with a hearty banquet of stages, power-ups, and even a local split-screen multiplayer mode to help whet the appetite. It also features an OST that remains true to the spirit of an old-school karting game, which comes complete with all of the toe-tapping chirpiness of a traditional retro arcade battler — and that alone counts for a lot here.

With all of the above said, for a would-be love letter to a cult antihero—Bloodborne, that is—Nightmare Kart does manage to stand on its own two feet and deliver a frightfully good arcade game. A brilliant game, no — but a game that checks all of the right boxes, yes. And so, for what it’s worth, I do feel as if there’s something to write home about here, especially for those who share an undying love of PSX shoddiness and light horror tropes. Again, it might fall short on a fantastic plot and airtight mechanics, but to give credit where credit is due, it does make for an entertaining karting game. What more could you want?

Verdict

Nightmare Kart finds the perfect balance between being an ode to old-school Mario Kart-like bumper racing and Tim Burton-esque gothic subculture, thus making it a one-of-a-kind experience that, while still lacking in plot points and rich character development, is bound to appeal to both petrolheads and horror enthusiasts alike.

If you can turn a blind eye to the blatant similarities that Nightmare Kart shares with, well, Bloodborne, then you should be able to appreciate it for the facets that it so elegantly brings to the circuit. While it might not boast a perfect racing experience, it does present itself as a fantastic karting affair with a lot more to enjoy than charcoal tones and rigor mortis. That, to me, makes the ticket stub a lot easier to stomach. The fact that it’s a free-to-play game, too, just adds a cherry on top of the tombstone.