Deep motorbike sim RIMS Racing is free to try for a few days
It's a racer, but also an engineering game.
RIMS Racing is a meticulously detailed motorbike racing sim released on Steam back in August. It's a fairly niche affair, but if you can do a lap in MotoGP 21 without skidding onto the green then it's probably for you. It's not just about racing, either: there's a detailed engineering component that lets you tweak just about every real world aspect of a motorbike. You can even dismantle individual parts for optimization, and RaceWard Studio promises that "you will become familiar with every last screw in your motorbike."
Depending on your attitude towards racing games, that's either a horrifying prospect or a genuinely exciting promise. If you belong to the latter and haven't picked up RIMS Racing yet, the racer is free to try on Steam at the moment, and will remain so until October 27 at 7pm CEST / 1pm ET / 10am PT / 6pm BST or 3am AEST on the 28th.
It definitely seems like the kind of game that would benefit from a try-before-you-buy approach, because while most sim-oriented racers offer something for the more arcade-leaning player, RIMS Racing doesn't seem to compromise in that regard. This is why PC gaming is brilliant though: utterly niche labours of love like this can flourish. But if it all seems a bit too sober for you, maybe the promise of The Bloody Beetroots cosmetic DLC will tip you over the edge. That'll also be available for free from October 29.
RIMS Racing is also 38% off for the duration of the free period.
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Shaun Prescott is the Australian editor of PC Gamer. With over ten years experience covering the games industry, his work has appeared on GamesRadar+, TechRadar, The Guardian, PLAY Magazine, the Sydney Morning Herald, and more. Specific interests include indie games, obscure Metroidvanias, speedrunning, experimental games and FPSs. He thinks Lulu by Metallica and Lou Reed is an all-time classic that will receive its due critical reappraisal one day.