Arcade racer Trailblazers shows off its track-painting antics in new trailer

Trailblazers is an arcade racer that's worth knowing about, if Wes's hands-on is anything to go by. It's billed as "F-Zero meets Splatoon": you thrash hover cars around tight corners while also laying down paint. You'll go faster when driving in your own side's paint, and your total points depends not just on where you finish in the race, but on how much colour you've laid down. A new trailer, above, focuses on the game's partner battle mode, which pits three teams of two against each other.

It's a fairly simple video, but it gives you a good idea of the basic principles behind doing well in the mode. One player takes the lead, laying down paint on the tarmac, while the other tracks closely behind, gaining speed all the time. Eventually, the trailing car can slingshot past and, presumably, start laying paint ahead. It reminds me of the way cycling teams race: each rider takes a turn at the front of the pack to generate a slipstream for the others to race in.

Naturally, while doing this you'll have to try and stop the enemy teams doing the same, and I think that could throw up some interesting tactical decisions. Is it worth one player abandoning the duo for the first lap and just disrupting other pairs, while their teammate paints as much as possible? I'm not sure, but I'm eager to find out.

Trailblazers will be out on May 8—you can check out the Steam page here.

Samuel is a freelance journalist and editor who first wrote for PC Gamer nearly a decade ago. Since then he's had stints as a VR specialist, mouse reviewer, and previewer of promising indie games, and is now regularly writing about Fortnite. What he loves most is longer form, interview-led reporting, whether that's Ken Levine on the one phone call that saved his studio, Tim Schafer on a milkman joke that inspired Psychonauts' best level, or historians on what Anno 1800 gets wrong about colonialism. He's based in London.