Star Wars Galactic Racer [Preview]: More than just awesome racing

Hands-on with the upcoming Star Wars vehicular experience

Even though you can regularly find me on a track in Mario Kart or Forza, I’m still a sucker for unique racing games. When Star Wars Galactic Racer was announced, I didn’t quite know what the game was going to function like. Sure it’s a sci-fi racing game, but was it going to lean more into the sim side or would it lean more into the arcade side?

The reality is that it leans most into the Star Wars side, focusing on a love of all things that move within that galaxy, rather than just wanting to be a competent racer.

Oh, and yeah, it *IS* very much a competent racer. Like, a really fucking great competent racer.

We went hands on with it at Summer Game Fest, comprising of about 50 minutes of the game’s campaign and another 10 or so in other modes. The most surprising aspect of the campaign is that it is a full narrative, focusing on an antiheroic racer known as Shade as they’re contacted by Darius Pax to race against his industrial race rival Kestar Bool. This idea of a rivalry embeds into a roguelike race structure, where we enter a league and need to make our way through a series of races and events. Not every event is a full race — some are time trials, some are a little more exploratory — but they all require piloting a speedy vehicle of some sort.

The game kicks off with a quick tutorial, having us try three different ships and their special moves, which entail holding the L-stick a direction and pushing the Square button (we played on a PS5). We can drift, which becomes incredibly important around tight turns, and we can boost, using a ramjet gauge that can slowly fill up as we hold the accelerator button. But if we over boost for too long, then we have some serious heat issues that we need to worry about.

The campaign itself uses a hub designed as an encampment in the middle of a desert. Here, racers from different rival groups meet, improve their ships and pickup intel on courses, slowly advancing the plot. We can chat with Dax, our race sponsor, or walk around and talk to other racers to form some pseudo alliances or just set up secondary tasks. It’s not a big area, but from what we saw there seems to be a lot of opportunity for what can take place here, both in and out of our vehicles. The hub design is great, depicting a vibrant, colorful oasis full of recognizable aliens from the Star Wars mythos. The creatures and characters are incredibly details; we can even see the individual hairs on some of their faces and skin, for instance. We can also accessorize our Shade to give ourselves a more unique, custom look. Once we find Dax we kick off an exhibition race to prove to our backers that we’re worthy of putting money into. If we don’t impress them now then we won’t be going anywhere in this league.

Our first race kicks off with a Speeder on a course known as The Giant’s Graveyard. There are a few obstacles to avoid and secondary pathways we can take, like under arches or through caves, but boosting over a ramp is a true joy, seeing our cruiser leap into the air ahead of the other racers. Once we make it through this course we’ve proved our mettle, earned a League Coin, and can start a full racing series.

The League is a roguelike “tour”, where we select tracks and events on a map, earn rewards and choose our next path forward. The path splits, it takes us to trials or to tests, and it’s up to us to figure out and plan ahead for what we think will be best. We race across several locations on different planets including Jakku, Lantana, Ando Prime and Derven Acos, so there will be a variety of courses.

Our next event, however, is at Debris Dunes. In a novel twist we start off each race by arming up our vehicle. Depending on what we’re driving, pressing buttons in specific order can activate different lite bonuses for our vehicle, and feels a bit like flipping actual switches across a dashboard. It’s quick, and can be missed, but it’s also not the most crucial thing to have to do. Debris Dunes proves a little more comfortable of a track for me, as I win the race with a few boosts late in the final lap.

In between races we can upgrade our vehicle based on randomized equipment (represented almost like cards) that we are presented with, so if we want better durability or faster speed on straightaways we can just select something that we think will improve our chances in the next race.

In my case, the next event is a field test for the ramjet. Here we have to boost a certain amount before we complete the laps on a course. Both times I have this come up I miss it by about 150 points out of over 11,000 so I’m consistently wondering where I can shave my time or boost a little longer.

Other races include Eliminator races, in which we continue to go around a course losing the back racer each lap until there are 3 left (or until enough crash out) or traditional races in which we need to get as high up as we can but winning isn’t required for moving on. The Eliminator races are the ones we do have to worry about. No matter how far we’ve come, if we miss out in the Eliminator then we lose our league token and have to start all the way back at zero. Thankfully it doesn’t take a lot to get back to this particular race. In my 50 minutes of campaign play time I missed the final three twice and had to backtrack, but then made it my third time through, learning the areas of the track where I need to be most careful and where to boost. The Eliminator serves as almost a test to see if we’ve mastered enough of the lessons from previous races, but once we do (which doesn’t take a lot) then we’re well on our way to the next planet. The game’s narrative plays it up well, letting us know that we just have to pick up our flight suit and earn another League Token and try again. Even when we start back the beginning we’ve unlocked characters that we can interact with, customization options, and more access to features that we didn’t currently have, so the story feels like it’s still moving strong.

For the final 10 minutes or so of our demo session we get to try our hands at Pod Racing, which to be frank is wildly different than the regular speeder/cruiser sessions in the Campaign. The pod racers are spindlier, they mover side to side more, and they can even get vertical (and drifting is much more touchy here) than with the heavier craft. It’s the same game, but it’s fresh — it might finally be what we all imagined Pod Racing actually feels like.

Star Wars: Galactic Racer was already on our collective radars, but now it’s shot well ahead into the forefront position of any vehicle-based game coming this year, and possibly action game in general. If a short demo is this delightful and tense, then the full race might have us breaking controllers with big smiles stuck to our faces.

Star Wars: Galactic Racer arrives October 6, 2026 on PlayStation, Xbox and PC.