A podracing roguelite from ex-Burnout developers is one of the best-reviewed Star Wars games ever made. Its new accolades trailer is shouting about it, and it has every right to.
IGN has published an accolades trailer for Star Wars: Galactic Racer, out now on PS5, Xbox Series X|S and PC.
It sits on an 87 average and 96% recommend on OpenCritic, with 5/5s from Eurogamer and Giant Bomb.
It's made by Fuse Games, a new UK studio founded by ex-Criterion (Burnout, Need for Speed) developers.
The campaign is a roguelite; the main criticism is a small set of planets.
It's NZ$89.99 or A$88.50 on Steam, with no season pass.
Accolades trailers are usually where publishers cherry-pick a few 7s, blow them up to billboard size and hope nobody checks. Star Wars: Galactic Racer just dropped one, and for once the bragging is fair. Three weeks after launch, it’s sitting on an 87 average on OpenCritic, 96% of critics recommend it, and it’s being called one of the best-reviewed Star Wars games ever made. A podracing game. In 2026. Who had that on their bingo card?
The trailer went up on IGN’s channel on 27 October (US time). It’s the usual mix of high-speed footage and review quotes, but the quotes are doing a lot more heavy lifting than most.
It’s the debut game from Fuse Games, a studio in Guildford, England, set up in 2023 by senior developers from Criterion, the team behind Burnout and the modern Need for Speed games. Studio boss Matt Webster also worked on Star Wars at Criterion, helping DICE with Battlefront and Battlefront II. It’s published by Secret Mode and built in Unreal Engine 5.
Critics have been properly chuffed. Eurogamer and Giant Bomb both gave it full marks, GameSpot went 9/10, and Game Informer 8.5. On Metacritic it hit 88 on PS5 at launch, and GamesRadar+ worked out that it beats every Battlefront game on the site. That’s a low bar for some of those, but still.
It’s not perfect. PC Gamer was the coolest at 76/100, and IGN’s 8/10 came with a gripe that the small set of planets gets repetitive. That’s the main knock you’ll see across reviews: brilliant racing, not quite enough places to do it.
The game has also produced an unlikely star. Biddy Blas, a pint-sized racer, has turned into a full-blown meme, with clips racking up millions of views. His voice actor, Richard Summers-Calvert, told PC Gamer he was “overwhelmed and overstimulated” by the reaction. Webster told VGC the character’s rise is remarkable, and pointed any merch questions at Lucasfilm. Star Wars fans love a glup shitto, and Biddy is the latest.
It’s doing alright commercially too. It debuted at number two in the UK physical charts, and Steam trackers put its all-time peak at somewhere around 15,000 to 17,000 players at once. Not GTA numbers, but solid for a brand new studio’s first game. It’s also up for Best Audio Design at the Golden Joystick Awards on 11 November.
This is the Star Wars game nobody asked for that turned out to be the one everyone needed. After a decade of Battlefront drama, a cancelled this and a delayed that, a small new studio from Guildford has made a racing game that critics are putting up there with Knights of the Old Republic. That should be embarrassing for a few much bigger publishers.
The roguelite campaign is a genuinely smart idea, too. Racing games have been stuck on the same “win race, unlock car, repeat” loop since the PS2, and Criterion veterans are exactly the people who’d know it. The only real worry is the one the reviewers keep raising: not enough planets. Fix that with a meaty expansion, keep the no-season-pass promise, and Fuse could have a long-running hit on its hands. Ninety bucks isn’t cheap, but by every account this one actually earns it.
Have you played it yet, or are you saving your money for GTA 6? Tell us in the comments, or argue it out in the GetRekt Discord.
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