When it comes to making cars go sideways and generating as much tyre smoke as possible, the Japanese really know what they're doing. It's the spiritual home of drifting, and the country has produced some of the most desirable cars for drift tuners and enthusiasts. Shamefully, this is a location and subsection of car culture that's been neglected by the big names in open-world racing like Forza, Test Drive, and The Crew. That's where JDM Japanese Drift Master comes in. A compact single-player racer featuring iconic, licensed Japanese cars and a storyline told through manga, it just slid its way onto Steam.
I've had my eye on racing game – we tend to see small and stylistic indies or content-packed triple-A titans in the genre, but JDM aims somewhere in the middle. Picking a niche like drifting is a smart choice – it's usually just an optional way of racking up skill points or reserved for specific event types in games like Forza Horizon 5. But here, it's at the heart of everything, so naturally, Japan had to be the setting. While JDM's Guntama prefecture is fictional, it draws direct inspiration from the Honshu region of the country and is packed with 250 kilometres of roads, ranging from urban streets, to highways, to mountain trails.
The game's story revolves around a foreign racer who's traveled to Japan to push his racing and drifting career forward. While here, he'll battle against the country's best, making some friends (and likely some enemies too) on the way. While the events and results of your races add help shape the story, the narrative heavy lifting is done in a really unique way – manga. Pages of original, expertly drawn manga will push the story forwards and introduce new characters.
As you progress, you'll be able to unlock better cars and tuning options in your quest to create the ultimate drifting machine. In what is a pleasant surprise for a game of its scale, almost all the cars you obtain are officially licensed.
As you'd expect, there are no Bugattis, Ferraris, and Aston Martins here – things are restricted to Japanese manufacturers, and specifically the models that are most widely loved by drifting enthusiasts. The Nissan Skyline R34. The Mazda RX-7. There are some real legendary cars in the 22-strong lineup.
JDM Japanese Drift Master is out right now on Steam, and until Wednesday, June 4, you can get 15% off to make it just $29.47 / £24.64. To add it to your library or simply learn more about it, head to its store page here.
For more, check out our lists of the best single-player games.
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