The simcade racer will feature a blend of realistic physics with arcade-styled gameplay, and will also support driving wheels and other peripherals
Developer Gaming Factory has announced that its racing title, JDM: Japanese Drift Master, will be out on March 26. The game is slated for release on PC, and will be available through Steam, Epic Games Store and GOG. There is also a new trailer, which you can check out below.
Taking place in the fictional Japanese prefecture Guntama, JDM: Japanese Drift Master will feature an open world with more than 250 km of roads to race and drift around in. Among other things in the world, it will also include landmarks for players to visit, like the Daikoku parking area and Himeji Castle.
JDM will also include a host of licensed cars from companies like Mazda, Subaru and Nissan. Gaming Factory has also stated that it will be announcing more cars coming to the game in the coming weeks. The title is fully entrenched in Japanese street racing culture and will include appropriate cars that players can also modify both visually and for the sake of better performance.
While full details about the sorts of customisation possible in JDM are currently unknown, according to the studio, it will include various upgrades, from a new ECU to a bōsōzoku exhaust, allowing players to tune their tricked out cars to their heart’s content. Players will also be able to adjust between making cars more prone to drifting on roads, or whether they will have better grip on corners.
In terms of racing gameplay, JDM has been described by Gaming Factory as a simcade racer, which would put it in line with titles like the Forza Horizon series. The genre traditionally blends elements of realistic driving with more arcade-styled gameplay, allowing for a good mix between tuning vehicles for actual effects, while still having accessible gameplay where a single mistake won’t cost players the entire race.
The studio has also announced that JDM will feature presets to support various peripherals, including driving wheels for fans of more sim-styled racing. Along with this, it will ship with key binding features that will allow players to use just about any peripheral they might have.
JDM: Japanese Drift Master will require PC players to have at minimum an Intel i5-7400 or AMD Ryzen 5 2600 CPU, an Intel Arc A580, an Nvidia GeForce GTX 1660 or an AMD Radeon RX 580 8GB GPU, and 8 GB of RAM. The recommended specs bump up the CPU requirements to an Intel i5 10400F or AMD Ryzen 5 3600, the GPU requirements to Intel Arc A770, GeForce RTX 3060 Ti or Radeon RX 6700, and RAM up to 32GB. The game also needs 16 GB of storage.