Podracing Returns: Hands-On With Star Wars: Galactic Racer, the Burnout Devs' High-Speed Roguelite

Lucasfilm's Star Wars: Galactic Racer is an arcade racer from Fuse Games, a studio packed with Burnout-series veterans. An IGN hands-on reveals a roguelite Outer Rim circuit with speeder bikes, landspeeders, and podracing on Tatooine, framing the October 6, 2026 release as a spiritual successor to Star Wars Episode I: Racer.

Star Wars: Galactic Racer roars onto the scene as a high-speed arcade racer built by Fuse Games, a studio stocked with veterans of the legendary Burnout series. A new IGN hands-on reveals a roguelite circuit out in the Outer Rim where players pilot speeder bikes, landspeeders, and yes, podracers, positioning the game as a long-awaited spiritual successor to Star Wars Episode I: Racer.

A New Star Wars Racer From the Crashed-Out Minds Behind Burnout

When Lucasfilm revealed Star Wars: Galactic Racer earlier this year, the headline was the studio behind it. Fuse Games counts a number of Burnout alumni among its ranks — the developers responsible for some of the most beloved arcade racers ever made. The premise of a high-octane Star Wars racing game shaped by that pedigree set expectations soaring, and an extended IGN hands-on suggests the optimism is warranted. The preview describes the experience plainly: this high-speed roguelite racer is an absolute blast.

It also fits a broader Disney strategy. Rather than leaning solely on a small group of internal teams or locking the license to a single publisher the way the EA deal did last decade, Disney now hands its franchises to nearly anyone with a strong pitch. That open-door approach already produced a Game of the Year–caliber standout in 2024's Indiana Jones and the Great Circle from MachineGames, the Wolfenstein veterans. Galactic Racer is the latest bet that fresh studios can do right by a beloved Star Wars corner — in this case, the racing legacy that podracing fans have been waiting two decades to see revived.

Made in the Shade: The Outer Rim Roguelite Loop

The setup is straightforward. Players take on the role of Shade, a semi-willing competitor in the galaxy's renegade racing circuit, out among the Outer Rim where rules and laws are treated more like polite suggestions. Shade would rather lie low and avoid Kestar Bool, a powerful and petty enemy with both the means and the temperament to make life difficult — which, naturally, becomes the motivation to knock Bool off his comfortable perch. The path to the top runs through a full slate of events aboard speeder bikes, skim speeders, landspeeders, and podracers.

Galactic Racer wraps all of this in a roguelite loop. Players customize their character, personalize their vehicle through earned cosmetic unlocks, and — most importantly — tune their ride with gameplay-affecting abilities won by placing well. But the Outer Rim offers no second chances. Racing requires holding a League Token, and losing it during one of the run's Eliminator races sends the player back to the start. Those Eliminators operate exactly like Burnout's: the last-place driver is disqualified at the end of every lap. In classic roguelite fashion, anything previously unlocked carries over to the next attempt, so each restart feels like progress rather than punishment.

The Eliminators bite hard. In a 45-minute session, the IGN preview recounts getting too aggressive going for a takedown on an early turn, slamming into a wall, and being bounced from the tournament before there was time to climb out of last place — forcing a full restart. The aggressive CPU-racer AI, by all accounts, means business. The takedowns themselves are pure Burnout, right down to a nearly identical slow-motion wreck camera that longtime fans of the series will recognize instantly.

A Stroll Around the Paddock

Between races, the action shifts to foot. Players roam each planet's paddock — essentially the infield areas of the circuit, comparable to a NASCAR infield — where they can chat with fellow racers, fine-tune their character and vehicle, and upgrade their ship with Hibi, a monkey-like mechanic. Presiding over the whole operation is organizer Darius Pax, a big-voiced, big-personality creature whose delivery, per the preview, channels a bit of Danny DeVito's Penguin from Batman Returns. These quieter on-foot stretches do a great deal of the heavy lifting in "Star Wars-ifying" the experience.

Pre-Race Mechanics: Ignition Sequences and Mario Kart Starts

Before a race begins, two interactive moments can hand players an early edge. The first is an ignition sequence: regardless of vehicle type, nailing a prompted button sequence within a brief window starts the race with a bonus — a primed afterburner, a fully charged shield ready to deploy at the line, or both. The preview notes the sequence repeated identically across every race in the demo, with the hope that the final build randomizes it to keep players sharp.

The second is a Mario Kart–style launch surge. By holding the throttle in the middle of three zones on an on-screen meter as the green flag drops, players burst out of the gate ahead of the pack. In races that can be decided in a second or two, that opening moment matters far more than it might first appear.

Abilities and Builds: Shields, Ramjet, and Bespoke Loadouts

What truly makes or breaks a race is how often and how well a player deploys their abilities. There are many to unlock, enabling highly bespoke vehicle builds, and the hands-on surfaced a couple of standouts. The shield is a timed defense: in a tight cluster of rivals, someone is bound to try shunting the player into a wall, and timing the shield to absorb that takedown attempt — before its juice runs out and a cooldown kicks in — can mean the difference between staying on track and being wiped off the wall.

The other featured ability is Ramjet, functionally an afterburner with a daring twist: players can keep the speed boost going past its cooldown point, at the risk of pushing too far and detonating their craft. Modifiers refine the tool further — one example reduced Ramjet consumption by 50% while airborne, a meaningful perk given that these vehicles are technically in midair nearly all the time.

Tracks That Fight Back: Jakku, Lantaana, Ando Prime, and Tatooine

The tracks range from short to long and from scorching to freezing, depending on the planet. Jakku poses no temperature concerns, but Lantaana scatters patches of magma across the course that overheat a vehicle if a driver isn't careful. Ando Prime, an ice world, demands threading through conveniently placed heating tunnels to avoid freezing over and slowing down. Across all of them, knowing when to drift is crucial — especially on tracks with shortcuts unlocked by hitting borderline-hairpin turns just right — as is never sitting on a full reserve of afterburner. Between constant boosting, drifting, dodging environmental hazards, hunting shortcuts, and the give-and-take of takedowns, the arcade racer keeps players on edge at all times.

Become a Pod God: Podracing in Arcade Mode

The developers deliberately saved podracing for the end of the demo, offering it in a dedicated Arcade mode separate from the roguelite circuit. The breather first proved wise, because podracers are a far tougher beast to tame — much faster than the other vehicles, but also dramatically more fragile. The podracing run took place on Tatooine, including a harrowing narrow-canyon stretch where a single wrong move turns the racer into a stain on the rock wall. There's even a cockpit camera view that looks especially striking on a podracer, though it demands even quicker reflexes. For longtime fans, this is the heart of the nostalgia: the podracing thrills of the original Episode I game, rebuilt with modern arcade-racing craft.

Why Fans Are Buzzing

For a generation of players, Star Wars Episode I: Racer remains one of the finest licensed games ever made, and the absence of a proper podracing follow-up has stung for more than two decades. Star Wars: Galactic Racer answers that longing directly — and the early read is that Fuse Games has paired genuine Burnout-grade arcade-racing instincts with a roguelite structure that, against initial skepticism, fits the material well. With aggressive AI, build-defining abilities, hazard-laden planets, and the podracing payoff fans crave, the preview lands as a confident vote of optimism. Star Wars: Galactic Racer launches October 6, 2026, and for anyone who has been waiting since the Boonta Eve Classic, it can't come soon enough.