Reviewed on: Nintendo Switch

Some games try to bring to life the world imagined by children. Super Toy Cars follows this premise, turning into reality a race between toy cars competing on tracks built from everyday objects. Despite its competent work in creating this feeling, its gameplay keeps the game from reaching its full potential.

Drifting should be an exciting maneuver, but it is unnecessary and only slows your car down.

Mechanics: 4

Super Toy Cars has a career mode with 8 episodes of 6 levels, totaling 48. Each of these challenges has its own objective, which can be one of 5 types:

Race: A traditional race. Whoever completes the last lap first wins.
Time Attack: You must reach checkpoints before time runs out.
Time Trial: Ranking by lap time.
Elimination: Every 15 seconds the last racer is eliminated.
Evade: Every 15 seconds the last racer is eliminated, and the track is full of explosive mines!

All your progress earns money that can be used to buy new car models or invest in upgrades and customizations for your cars, which helps provide motivation to keep playing and advancing in your career.

The controls during races are quite simple and direct: you steer your little car with the left analog stick, accelerate with the right trigger and brake with the left. While the A button is pressed the car drifts through turns, the X button resets your vehicle to the center of the track and Y uses the equipped power-up, which can be an explosive mine, a bowling ball that rolls over the racers ahead, a guided missile or an oil slick. The B button activates the turbo, but it only works when the energy bar is full – drifting and staying airborne charge this precious resource.
There are settings to place the camera near, far or even above your little car (!), but in this overhead view the orientation does not follow your car’s and ends up making the game quite hard to control… But, at the same time, it makes everything a bit more realistic, since it approaches the experience of driving a remote-controlled car.

Although the controls and systems are quite interesting, there are some serious flaws in STC that spoil the enjoyment of the game.
There are moments when the collision detection gets weird, and the game randomly chooses to ignore some obstacles and lets you drive through them. The behavior is inconsistent and can be quite bothersome.
However, the game’s biggest problem is its physics. Your car’s collisions with other vehicles or even with parts of the scenery have effects that make no sense. And, worst of all, the gravity is very, very strange. The tracks have passages with ramps and other stretches involving drops, and your car simply stops when it touches the ground… That is when the game doesn’t consider the fall a serious crash and punishes you by resetting your car to the center of the track. There are countless points of frustration in the physics programming of Super Toy Cars.

Launching yourself into the air should give an adrenaline rush… But all you can think about is the annoyance that comes next.

Fun: 7

With its various race modes, STC manages to entertain without becoming tiresome. Kids can have a blast trying to meet the objectives of each track.
The selection of items creates a mood of wacky racing and helps make the competition more dynamic and unpredictable. The placement of the power-ups at points off the optimal path forces players to make quick decisions, which helps make the experience more engaging. It is worth noting and praising that there is this level of attention to track design.

The game’s strange physics, however, spoils some opportunities for greater excitement and fun. It is very frustrating to land on a downhill stretch and still lose all the accumulated speed. It makes no sense and is downright annoying.

It is worth noting that the game passes up the chance to use motion controls, a feature that would be quite attractive to a younger audience (which seems to be the game’s target audience)… Besides, the game requires a pair of Joy-Con per person, even though the controls are easily adjustable for use with split controllers.

One moment you are taking off at high speed… The next, you are parked because you touched the ground.

Audio and visuals: 9

Whether to be appealing to children or to heighten that feeling of imagination coming to life, the Eclipse Games team clearly invested great effort in producing high-fidelity graphics. Both the little cars and the settings are stunning, with vibrant colors and great reflection, light and shadow effects.
In fact, the visuals are so elaborate that they seem to push the limits of the Switch‘s performance. The game runs at 30 frames per second, which is already low for a racing game, and still seems to suffer from a few rare moments of drops…

The music is pleasant, in a light rock style… But at times the soundtrack seems a bit too slow and calm. To make matters worse, all the tracks are similar and end up making everything seem unoriginal and tiresome.

There’s no denying the game has great visual appeal.

Final thoughts

Super Toy Cars is a game that prioritizes creating a feeling of nostalgia and does not focus on delivering a solid, polished or even pleasant gameplay experience. Perhaps because of its apparent target audience, there is great effort to present attractive visuals, even at the expense of the Switch‘s performance.
Still, the game can be a good option for those unwilling to invest 40 dollars in Mario Kart 8 or for a younger and less demanding audience.

Score

Mechanics = 4

Fun = 7

Audio and visuals = 9

Worth the 10 dollars? Not if you are looking for a good racing game or even a kart party game. However, this is a great option for those looking for little games for their kids, nephews and nieces, and children in general.