Reality Drift, an OutRun-style racer with a Slay the Spire run bolted to the dashboard, launches November 11, 2026, Arganoid Industries announced on Tuesday. It comes to PC through Steam, with a demo in Steam Next Fest from October 19 to 26 and no price yet. The same announcement carries a name I did not expect on a one-developer racer: Keita Takahashi, the designer of Katamari Damacy.
Each mission strings together five or more tracks. At the end of each one, you pick the next track from three options, and each option comes with a linked upgrade to accel, max speed or grip. Some missions add a deck of cards that do things while they are drawn. You race 99 computer cars that pick upgrades by the same rules, but only you choose the road. The stops include Heaven, Hell and Cat Land, and your clients are godlike creatures with “nothing but disdain” for you, per the Steam page.
Takahashi’s biggest piece is a new track that drives straight through the human body. He also drew extra sprites: giant sheep, pigeons, skulls, bats, and a world where huge legs rise out of the ground. “I always try to make games which are a bit unhinged,” lead developer Andrew Gillett said in the announcement, and Takahashi was the first artist he thought of.
Arganoid Industries is Gillett plus hired help. He spent years at Frontier on RollerCoaster Tycoon 3, Thrillville, LostWinds 2, Kinectimals and Elite Dangerous. He also worked with Raspberry Pi co-founder Eben Upton on the Code the Classics books. Reality Drift grew out of a 2.5D racer he built for the second volume. The studio’s press kit says the idea came to him while watching a Slay the Spire stream. He has been at it for over four years. It is his second Steam release as an independent, and the first where he paid real artists instead of using what he calls bad programmer art.
Most of the look belongs to Shannon Fowler, who works as Emily L’Orange. She made the majority of the sprites, giant cats included, and Reality Drift is her first video game. Gillett went out of his way in the release to say the Takahashi news should not bury her work, which is the right instinct from a studio this small.
The retro racer shelf is mostly 80s neon, a point Gillett makes himself in the press kit. A racetrack through somebody’s kidneys, drawn by the Katamari designer, is a different pitch. You will want the Next Fest demo on October 19 to see whether the choices hold up at speed. Until then, wishlist it on Steam.
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