Have You Played Make Way?

When I was a kid, we spend hours upon hours playing the old Micro Machines on the Nintendo Entertainment System. Even 30 years later, I still love that game and while there have been plenty of remakes, no game ever came close to the original in terms of entertainment it provided. Up until now that is.

During our latest LAN event, we stumbled across another remake of the original. To say we were impressed by the title truly would be an understatement. Make Way has been a literal blast to play. What was intended to be an event mostly focused on playing Valheim turned into heated races for half the night. So let's take a closer look at that little gem of a game!

In case you never played one of the old classics that Make Way follows, it's a top down arcade racing game. Up to four players compete for the first place, driving tiny cards on small yet pretty chaotic racing tracks. The rules are pretty simple. Try to be as fast as possible without falling off the track. If you fall back behind too far, you are eliminated. The track itself is made up of several segments and every time you make it to the end of a segment, you earn points. If you've been eliminated during that part of the race, you will rejoin the race and compete again for the next segment. Each segment is pretty short, usually only taking roughly 5 to 15 seconds to complete.

The fun part is that these segments are added to the track in between rounds. Not only that, though, these segments are picked and placed by everybody taking part in the race. Players are presented with random track parts that they can add to the existing track in any way the like. These track parts are either new segments that will extend the race track itself of additional hazards that can be added to existing track parts. These hazards range from simple road bumps to moving tesla coils and are sure to make things even more chaotic.

I can't even tell you the exact number but there are dozens and dozens of different segments that can be added to the track. There are loopings, moving barrels, roundabouts, or a full highway part including moving traffic that is sure going to make things a lot more interesting. This generally leads to very different tracks each time a new race is started and by the time the first player gets to the 4000 points needed to win the game, you will have built a completely unique track that is bound to be completely different to the one you are going to build next.

The game also has a nice progression system that unlocks more and more track parts as you play more and more games. Early on, you will be presented with mostly pretty tame track segments and basic hazards. But as you unlock more stuff, things can get out of hand more and more. Since you are always presented with 6-8 different options and only up to 4 players can pick a part, though, it's always up to the players how tame or crazy a race is going to become over time.

To make things even more interesting, there are item crates scattered across the track and whenever you pick one up, you will equip a random weapon that you can use to distract your opponents... or outright blow them off the track if they are unlucky. Once again, there's a wide variety of items, ranging from a machine gun to laying mines or even a giant hammer that will whack any car off the track that is unlucky enough to end up in front of you. At the same time, these items aren't too powerful and more often than not, we ended up hurting ourselves just as much when using them. As with most things in the game, they are mostly just there to make things more chaotic, hilarious, and entertaining for everybody.

Handling the car itself is super straight forward. You only need forward, backward, left, right to drive and space to use your weapon and that's it already. The cars go pretty fast, though, and with drivers bumping into each other constantly, it can be really challenging to stay on the track and in the race all the time. But even if you get behind sometimes, the game has great rubber band mechanics. If you are driving behind another car, you will get a speed boost allowing you to overtake it. Also, when rejoining the race after a segment is finished, you will join at full speed, thus bringing you right back to the front of the field.

For most of our matches, things have been really close and most of the time we had several players reach 4000 points during the same round. Whenever this happens, the game goes into sudden death mode. There everybody still around is just racing it out. This time, you won't get back into the game if you are eliminated and the race just goes on until the first player reaches the goal or all other players are eliminated. As we had a tendency to make the first few segments the most challenging, sudden death usually was over within a few seconds, so even if you didn't make it there, you only had to wait a few seconds until the next race was underway.

You can get the game from Steam for only 15€ and after just one weekend, I already have 8 hours played on that title, telling you exactly just how much we enjoyed playing the game. Other players seem to agree with us, as the title is comfortably sitting at 91% positive reviews and even 96% positive reviews for the last 30 days. It can also be played solo against the AI but I honestly didn't try it as these games are always best when played with your buddies around. So if you liked Micro Machines or are just looking for a fun and chaotic game to play with some friends, this might be the perfect title for you, I highly recommend the game!