Game EXP: Supid Cars (OQ2)

[Disclaimer:  I received a review key for Stupid Cars through Keymailer, a third-party website/company that connects publishers and developers with content creators.  The game was given without promise or expectation of a positive review, only that the game be played and content be created through the playing of the game and the experience.  Unless otherwise noted, all content in the following article is from my own playthrough of this game.] 

Stupid Cars
Release Date: January 9, 2025
Systems: Meta Quest, Windows, Nintendo Switch
Publisher: Gimbal Studio
Developer: Gimbal Studio
Time Spent: 1 Hour 17 Minutes

It's probably my fault for not looking too closely at Stupid Cars before I established in my brain what I thought the game was going to be.  Even after watching the trailer, what I was expecting it to be, a VR puzzle game that would be filled with individual puzzles kind of like the board game Rush Hour but played in real-time instead of turns.  Even the trailer almost feels like it leaves a lot to interpretation, not even once focusing on the fact that there is a score counter at the top of the screen.

Stupid Cars is instead closer to what is presented on the surface in the trailer.  A large arcade cabinet with cars and motorcycles zipping by that you're able to manually speed up and slow down, and for each vehicle that safely makes it through to the other side, you get one point.  The highest score. . . is the highest.  There is an online leaderboard but I never felt compelled to attempt to even get close to any of the listed highest scores.  The score is also there as a way of keeping the next level locked, so you have to earn at least 50 points to continue on to the next stage.  There are some modifiers to the score, such as random gold cars that are worth two points, and an unlockable mechanic that speeds up the cars and doubles your score while it's turned on; you're able to toggle the Turbo Mode on and off.  You're also allotted a continue if any of the cars crash to carry over your score when you start the same stage again, although it seems that the rate of the cars driving out is the same as when the car crashed, but the board starts out clear.

Let's go through each level because as you're probably aware, I have some thoughts.

Level 1: Classic

You know, just your basic poorly planned out intersection immediately after a series of eight tunnels.  I don't know why it didn't stick out to me at first, but the cars are driving on the left side of the road, but that obviously didn't bother me as it wasn't something I noticed until level 3.  The tutorial itself is pretty rudimentary and I still found it a little misleading.  I thought that along with being able to speed up the cars, that you could also slow them down beyond their initial starting speed, so three speeds altogether.  I think that's what I was trying to do at 1:40, was to slow the Jeep down, not drive it right into the convertible.  That's also why I was looking down at the control panel, convinced that I missed something about the controls and looking for where the "slow down" button was, not just the "speed up" button.

"Classic" was the only stage I actually felt moderately compelled to get a higher score beyond 50, which is why I played for an additional seven minutes.  It was fun, but at that point, still only about 12 minutes, I decided that with no additional gameplay elements in this mode, I was going to stop.

Level 2: Bus Rush

Yeah, I went into this stage a bit cocky.  Getting 92 points in the previous level and feeling like I had a decent grasp of the mechanics along with fewer intersecting roads felt like this was going to be a proverbial cakewalk, but this one really put me in my place (or did it?).  Not even a minute into the Bus Rush I was barely able to score 8 points, distracted by the bus and where the various roads were intersecting, and seeing two gold-two-point cars got me excited.

The buses ended up being harder to predict how they would affect the rest of the traffic, despite the in-game warning that a bus was coming.  I just found it hard to factor in their length and speed with the rest of the cars on the road, which is kind of the whole point of the game.  But even after the second attempt where I got 43 points, I still felt like I had a decent grasp on the mechanics.  I think the difficulty I faced with this level cemented my desire to not try and go for not a leaderboard high score, but a personal best high score, higher than the 50 required to unlock the next level.

Level 3: Bike Blitz

If I had thought that Bus Rush was hard, I had no idea what was in store for me with Bike Blitz.  This was also, surprisingly enough, the level where I realized that the vehicles driving on the left side of the road, as opposed to the right side like here in the United States, was throwing off my perspective and previous knowledge of traffic circles.  The other complication here was keeping track of the motorcycles/mopeds once they entered the traffic circle because once you get two or more bikes in there at the same time, it's all a manner of remembering when each vehicle entered and where they're going to exit.

I do love how around 19:00 I just gave up a kind of meddling just to see how many points I could score without touching any of the bikes.  Like, maybe that was the trick to this level, was to just let the bikes to their thing and you could get to 50 points.  But, as evidenced by the video, leaving the bikes alone will net you zero points on average.  And it's not like I could feel myself getting any better at this, like it all just felt like luck.  Which is probably why at 21 minutes in, my high score was still only 39.  And then on the next run, I managed to score 39 on my first try, briefly thinking that I would turn Turbo Mode on and off anytime a gold car was about to finish, but I found that tactic to be too risky.  That excitement you see in my magnificent attempt at a laser light show at 22:57 is 100% real.  I wasn't doing that for the camera.

Level 4: Train Wreck

After the chaosness that was Bus Rush and what felt like an exponentially increasing difficulty curve in the game, I was so thankful that this level was easier and thereby, actually felt fun again.  The train moved faster than I thought it would and was on its own dedicated track (as opposed to the bus also using the road) and came at a regular 15 seconds.  I mean, I got 49 points on my second attempt.  Then after only about three minutes, I got 50 points.  I briefly thought about quitting, but because I was feeling more joy than I'd felt since the first level, I decided to continue and just see how high I could get my score; it was 90.

So while it took some getting used to keeping my eye on the track and the rest of the cars on the road, overall, I really enjoyed this level.

Level 5: Loopy Lanes

Like Train Wreck before, Loopy Lanes was more fun than I expected with the return of traffic circles (traffic quarters?).  This level actually feels like it should have come before Bike Blitz as it felt easier despite there being two traffic circles instead of one.  That being said, this level was still pretty challenging having to time the delayed turn of the traffic circle in cars making an elongated right-hand turn; like I'm genuinely curious what the road sign prior to entering that intersection would look like.

Level 6: Chaos

You know, for a level titled "Chaos," I expected the culmination of all of the elements from each previous level to actually feel more chaotic.  I don't mean having cars and bikes and trains and buses all in the same level, and while that would have been entertainingly chaotic, this didn't feel chaotic.  Just busy.  Instead, we have 20 straight lanes of traffic and four intersections with only cars to deal with.  I would have at least expected there to be both cars and bikes or maybe a turn or two.  Maybe an overpass or something.  But sadly no.  Apart from there just potentially being more cars on the roads, the actual playing area was pretty disappointing.

Now, that doesn't mean that this level was easy because dealing with 10+ cars on the screen at the same time is mentally taxing and hard to keep track of.  I probably could have tried additional plays after getting to 69 on my go (at 5:14), but with how uninspired Chaos felt, I didn't really feel like trying to get a higher score than 70.

So that's Stupid Cars, or at least most of it.  I only unlocked two medals which can give you bonus points, which is probably how people get 350+ points on Classic, although I never looked into how to unlock all of the medals or how to actively try and score bonus points based on the medals I did have.  I'm not a big multiplayer person, but something about this game feels like it could somehow benefit from multiple players, although not even the Nintendo Switch version is multiplayer, so it's not just an issue to get it to work in VR.  I don't really know how much this game benefits from being a VR title as the controllers basically felt like mouse pointers and even though I was equipped with two of them, I never felt coordinated enough to use both at the same time; plus I felt that one was more than enough in most situations.  The environment was neat, but it was always the same skybox and ther was no change in the decore as you progressed through the game.  I guess I just feel like even without trying to unlock all of the medals, there didn't feel like there was a whole lot of game here.  Six levels that are already in endless mode so there really isn't anywhere to go unless you're trying for the leaderboard.

So yeah, I did have fun 60% of the time, with two of the middle levels causing me all manners of grief.  But if high-score hunting is your thing, then a VR game for less than $6.00 might just be your thing.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faeplantman/Jaconian
Pacing Deserted Roads