Every car in Beach Buggy Racing 2 has a unique driving style.
Here at Vector Unit, we love making games. We love it so much, in fact, that sometimes we just can’t leave well enough alone. If we see something that seems fine, we start to wonder how we could make it great instead. This is what gave us the crazy idea to completely retune every car in the game.
Central to any racing game are the vehicles, so it’s very important for them to feel just right. In a kart racing game like Beach Buggy Racing 2, this means several things:
Variety. We want a variety of cool-looking cars to choose from. With over 30 cars, ranging from the beach-ready Sun Dazer buggy, to the mean-looking armored muscle car that is the Interloper, to the sleek, futuristic Twister supercar, we think we’ve got this covered.
Personality. We want the car’s personality to be distinctive. In other words, a Beach Buggy should feel like a Beach Buggy, but a buggy with six exhaust pipes and a supercharger like the Sand Blaster should tear up the beach like there’s a Death Bat on its tail.
Balance. We want to make sure that players of all ages and skill levels can have fun and be competitive.
These last two, personality and balance, were the aspects of our car design that we felt could use some work. Some of our cars were just too overpowered, and too many of them felt similar to each other.
With that in mind, we got back to basics. When designing the feel of a Beach Buggy Racing 2 car, we have 4 stats to work with: Speed, Acceleration, Handling and Toughness. Speed is the highest speed your car can achieve; Acceleration is how quickly you get there. Handling is how easy it is to steer. Toughness is how much you can smash through obstacles like trees without losing speed.
Since this is a racing game, you might assume that the most important stat is speed. Speed is important of course, but we can’t just make all the cars super-fast, or they’d all feel the same, which is just plain boring. But if some cars are faster and some are slower, why would you want a slow one? This is where the other stats come in.
The stats for each car can be found on the Team screen. Yellow shows the base stat, and orange shows the upgraded stat, which increases with your Level. The dark blue bar shows the max for each stat.
Take a look at the Baja Jumper. Sure it's got a lower top speed, but with amazing acceleration you can zoom off the starting line and recover faster from crashes.
Speaking of crashing, you might prefer the Bulldog. It has maxed Toughness, so it laughs off even the biggest track hazards. Shortcut blocked by a giant boulder or a pile of logs? Smash through it without slowing down and catch up to those fancy-pants sports cars taking the long way around.
If speed is your thing, you can take the Cyclone muscle car with very high Speed and Acceleration. But if you do, you’d better be prepared to start turns early and avoid hazards like they’re homework. This is because the high Speed and Acceleration are balanced out with low Handling and Toughness.
So which car should you choose? That’s really up to you! Try out as many cars as you can, and find your favorites. If you’re hitting hazards and bouncing off walls like a pinball, you might want to go for a car that has high Toughness and Handling. If you find that getting around the track is easy enough but you can’t seem to get into 1st place, maybe find a car that has higher Speed or Acceleration. With over 30 cars to choose from, we’re confident you can find one that’s just right.
Have fun, and as always, thank you for your feedback and support!