I can not remember that I ever bought a game on release day, but last Thursday I did just that.

Earlier that day I was watching a YouTube video from early January about the racing games someone was looking for this year, as 2026 seems to be a pretty good year for fun car games, both SIM and more arcade-y. My interest was particularly peeked by his segment about Super Woden: Rally Edge - which is a game from the makers of Super Woden GP 2 which looks pretty fun too. It looks a bit like Art of Rally with a similar top-down view, but with more realistic looking graphics. Moreover, it looked plain fun. So, I searched for it on Steam and to my amazement it was set to release the same day, in just three hours.

I went on with my day, even discovered a new video by the same creator released just the day before, about him finishing the game already (I guess he had early access?). It made me even more interested in it, as it just looked right up my ally.

After a few hours of refreshing the Steam product page, it finally showed up as on sale, and it even was discounted a bit (cool - not necessary - but very cool). I... instantly bought it and played for a bit :) Suffice to say that I enjoyed myself immensely to the point that my kids looked at me funny and asked me why I was saying words they are not allowed to 😜

It is challenging in a good way, without getting (too) frustrating. The cars handle great, the gameplay for what I saw is fun and has multiple modes; from time trials, weekly challenges to the career mode where you progress from Class E to the monsters in A. The graphics are interesting - they even included some graphics filters to make it look like you are playing on a CRT, or in a painting. Art of Rally has a zen minimalism, Super Woden: Rally Edge has a bit more life in it, and it clicks with me.

The only thing that bothered me was the ghost of your own car from the previous time when (re)doing a time trial which is super distracting to me, but I later found out that you have to press down on the d-pad (maybe a few times as it toggles three modes) to disable it. You can enable it be pressing down again.

Has it been a week already? OK, let me post this and grab my Steam Deck for a quick drive.

Don't forget to change your oil!