REVIEW – Room Games’ game recently became available on Steam, but in Early Access, so it cannot be considered finished yet. As a result, the rating (and even the necessity of rating it) will certainly change later on, since, for example, the lack of content can’t really be held against it right now, making some criticisms meaningless… but at least we can already see how the fundamentals are shaping up.

It bears emphasizing once again that this is an Early Access title, so what you read below may still change later.

Simcade Racing

Remote-controlled (RC) cars and trucks race across a lot of outdoor and indoor tracks that are based on real circuits. Of course, the clichés are here too—you can compete on a beach or even in an amusement park. It’s already a plus that every track has its own environment and vibe, and not all of them are a breeze to learn (in fact, a few laps are genuinely tricky, which is how it should be).

There is a slight departure from real-life circuits, though. On those, you often encounter tighter sections with sharper (even hairpin) corners, whereas here everything felt a bit wider overall. Another physics-related point is worth highlighting: despite the different track surfaces, grip seemed to feel the same everywhere. Hopefully this is something Recharge will tweak later on, because right now it’s a (justifiably) criticizable negative.

At the moment, only the basic RC buggy is available in standard race mode. Time trials, rock crawling, and drifting are not yet accessible. That’s arguably another negative: during Early Access the game feels a bit thinner in content than expected—but Room Games openly says this will change.

One more thing that can definitely be held against it: the physics. We already touched on grip, but it deserves more detail. It doesn’t feel fully accurate yet, which makes the game itself somewhat lifeless in its current state. You’ll be able to upgrade your vehicle’s engine later and change its paint job, but even this area is half-finished right now. It’s encouraging, though, that the devs want to deliver that tinkering/finetuning experience in-game, because with RC cars, tweaking is basically an expected, essential element.

If Recharge gets that right, it will stand out later, and if it becomes sufficiently “meaty” in terms of content, the audience will surely appreciate it. It’s unlikely to offer a flood of licensed parts and brands—but it’s not realistic to expect every vehicle and component to be 100% official anyway. Even so, there are still aspects the audience doesn’t particularly like, which means the developers have a lot (indeed, a ton) of work ahead…

Re-Volt Redux

Recharge already looks quite good, but the frame rate tends to stutter here and there if you push the graphics settings higher, so there’s still plenty of optimization work ahead for Room Games. This also shows that Epic Games could do more on the Unreal Engine 5 side (and since more and more developers are switching to UE5, these micro-stutters and performance oddities are going to crop up in more titles).

Bugs have hit the UI as well: sometimes the menu did nothing, and more than once the graphics settings failed to save. Controller support could also be finicky, which is rather unpleasant when Recharge simply doesn’t detect it.

The developers aimed for authenticity too: you can use an actual RC transmitter, but that requires a dedicated peripheral—which, naturally, comes with a notable premium. Speaking of price, €19.5 (close to HUF 8,000) feels a bit steep for the game in its current form, though it’s a plus that the devs are actively responding to feedback.

There are more negatives: the major content expansions won’t arrive this year; the camera doesn’t move properly (depending on the corner, it stays tilted to the right or left); and leveling up takes a bit too long. The upshot is that you may grow bored with Recharge by the time the bigger content updates land. And that’s a shame, because there’s real promise here—plenty of it. The game can recapture the Re-Volt vibe, not from the late 1990s per se (two and a half decades have passed and much has changed since then—remote-controlled drones exist now, for example), but in a refreshed way.

Could Use Another Recharge… or Three

Recharge really shouldn’t be rated yet—there’s little point in slapping a serious score on an Early Access game—but since we can’t publish this character parade without a review box, let’s say that due to the so-so physics it gets a 6/10. There’s potential here, but plenty of room to grow.

-V-

Developer: Room Games
Publisher: Room Games
Genre: RC racing
Release date: TBD (Early Access: July 28, 2025)