Outrun-styled Racer Slipstream will receive its free expansion “blue hour” this 28th of June, also will be natively releasing on Xbox Series S|X and a bit later on, also PS5!. Adding: 3 cars, 5 tracks, 5 songs and 2 game modes
Vila-real, Spain – 20 of June, 2023. Spanish indie publisher BlitWorks an Brazilian indie developer ansdor are proud to celebrate the 5th anniversary of the arcade racer Slipstream with the free content expansion “blue hour”, that will be arriving this 28th of June to Nintendo Switch, PlayStation, Xbox consoles and PC. Slipstream will also be natively released on Xbox Series S|X and later on also PlayStation 5. The new expansion will offer 2 game modes, 3 cars and 5 new tracks with their respective 5 music tracks.
“The blue hour is a brief period of the day, after the sunset but before the night, when the sky takes on a deep blue tone. It’s long been appreciated by painters and photographers because of the beautiful and unique properties of light during this time. The fading light from the sun illuminates everything softly, and the deep blue sky creates a great contrast with the usually yellow-ish urban lamps. It’s a moment of natural beauty that happens every day. And as times of the day have always been a theme in Slipstream, in this expansion I joined forces with Effoharkay and took the opportunity to explore it a little more.” – Sandro de Paula, aka “ansdor”.
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 already available on Xbox, PlayStation 4|5 and Nintendo Switchat a price of 9.99 USD | 8.99 EUR. 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.
The combination of the colorful pixel art graphics with a soundtrack that draws from synth pop and jazz fusion influences by Stefan Moser, aka Effoharkay, 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, rewinding and slipstreaming mechanics add depth to the driving gameplay, and the result is a strategic, challenging and exciting experience.
