It’s easy to talk badly about the Star Wars prequels. The CGI doesn’t stand up to the test of time compared to other epics released at the same time, the weird age-gap casting, and, of course, the dying of a broken heart. Yeah, I don’t love the prequels, but one thing hasn’t changed since I was eight years old: I really want to podrace. Secret Mode has taken that core memory and pulled it into Star Wars: Galactic Racer.
Now I know I came off harsh at the beginning of this, toward the prequels, but it’s important to think about how fondly I remember podracing. The joy Anakin feels as he sits in that podracer to compete is infectious, and it taps into a part of me that has always been deeply in love with racing games. Star Wars: Galactic Racer is undoubtedly the realization of childhood dreams in the best ways.
Get BWT in your inbox!
Get BWT in your inbox!
During Summer Game Fest Play Days, media and content creators got the chance to go hands-on with Star Wars: Galactic Racer. If you’re unfamiliar, the game offers players a high-stakes, run-based Star Wars racing adventure that will invite budding pilots to shunt, slam, and takedown their rivals in the Galactic League.
Star Wars: Galactic Racer bridges smart racing mechanics and Star Wars wonder.
Set across the galaxy, the Galactic League is an unsanctioned racing circuit that began in the Outer Rim. Now, you step into the cockpit as a pilot named Shade as you explore the Star Wars Galaxy by competing and winning in races. We got a chance to look at the game’s single-player campaign and to start exploring the connections between characters.
What stood out the most here wasn’t the elements of customization (which were fantastic for both character and podracer), but rather the way that characetrs interacted over your radio. As you race, characters banter and rivalries form, helping propel you. It’s an exciting piece of world-building with opponents griefing you, helping to keep your excitement to win the race up.
These small moments of banter make Star Wars: Galactic Racer feel like a living world and harken back to the elements many racing fans loved from other titles. It also makes the idea of developing rivalries feel so much more meaningful, especially as you adapt to your new podracers and tracks, picking what works well for the environment and for you.
The glimpse of Star Wars: Galactic Racer’s campaign embraces charting your own path through the Galactic League.
But the single-player campaign is only one part of Star Wars: Galactic Racer. The rest of the game is all about arcade-style races that allow you to jump-in, jump-out, and even re-enact some of your favorite moments from the franchise, including playing in the Boonta Eve Classic on Tatooine that got us all to add, “now THIS is podracing” to our vocabulary.
During our Play Days demo, the tutorial featured in the solo campaign did a lot to expose players to the different types of vehicles, their special abilities, and how they handled on each track. Drifting in a converted Tie-fighter is different than the podracer you see in the Phantom Menace. It takes corners differently, drifts differently, and reacts differently to acceleration.
Because of how Star Wars: Galactic Racer introduces its tutorial, the game quickly onboards you to the possibilities of your podracing future, making it a little easier to choose your first vehicle. The real magic, though, is how Secret Mode has adapted nearly every element of racing titles that we know and love into podracing, while using familiar control schemes to do it.
Star Wars: Galactic Racer is built on the childlike wonder that we keep holding onto in a franchise that has moved past the Jedi.
The best of this is how each podracer drifts. The vehicles, once you’ve figured out how they handle, are sticky in the best way. And with the diversity of courses that each captures the wonder of the Star Wars Galaxy, it helps make sure that none of the races feel repetitive. While the Arcade mode lets you pick the races you want to tackle, in the campaign, Star Wars: Galactic Racer ensures that the different circuits also keep variety at their heart.
When working your way through the Galactic League in the campaign, winning isn’t always about beating other people. Sometimes it’s finishing the track within a certain time, breaking a record, or just not blowing up your podracer. That level of gameplay diversity allows players to pick their paths through the Galactic League without worrying about burning out (pun intended).
Star Wars: Galactic Racer is a stunning take on a small slice of the franchise that fits its new direction, which is moving away from Jedi and lineage. More importantly, though, the game ends up capturing nostalgia not by beating its player over the head with it, but by evoking the feelings we all felt when Anakin first took on Sebulba. By bridging tried-and-tested racing mechanics with the childlike wonder of podracing, Star Wars: Galactic Racer just works.
Star Wars: Galactic Racer launches on October 6th, 2026, on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC.
