Mini Madness

Of all the types of racing games that are out there, one of my favorites is when we drift around household items in tiny cars. I've loved the tabletop-style racer ever since I first played Micro Machines, and every year I hope that some developer will do this awesome sub-genre justice. Well, you can cross 2021 off the list, because this year's model is a thoroughly disappointing game called Mini Madness that comes to us from a first-time developer named D6 Team. It's a stark reminder that even if you have a great concept and get a lot of the elements right, you might as well not even start the race if the gameplay is bad. Buckle up, folks, because this is going to be a bumpy ride.

The promise of a tabletop racing game is that you get to speed through courses made up of everyday household items. You'll have to dodge cereal boxes in the kitchen, swerve around game controllers in the living room, avoid wooden blocks in the kids' room and maybe even drive up rare paintings in the attic. The courses and obstacles are relatable, because they are the types of things we see on a daily basis, freeing the developer to be as over-the-top and wild as they want. We're racing on dirty rugs and smashing the opponents into the toaster oven, so there's no expectation of realism.

That's something that Mini Madness gets right. This is a game that knows that half the fun of a racer like this is taking the full tour of the house and seeing how they use the everyday objects to construct each course. We get two of these unique tracks in each of the different rooms and areas of the house, giving us a nice variety of locations to race through and familiar obstacles to avoid along the way.

The way this game is structured has us taking on both of the tracks back-to-back in a normal race to the finish. This is followed by having us play the two courses again, this time with the ability to pick up and use a bunch of different weapons, such as homing missiles, land mines and even a shotgun. Once you've come in first in both the standard and weapon-based races, you'll move on to the kitchen, attic, corridor stairs or a number of other locations. We continue bouncing between these two race types until we've either seen the entire house or given up due to the awful gameplay.

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We'll get into why Mini Madness is so damn disappointing in a moment, but I first want to talk about the one thing that sets it apart from most of the other tabletop racers on the market. On top of buying new cars and paint jobs, you'll also have the opportunity to buy engine upgrades that will make you recover faster or speed up the time it takes to refill the turbo meter. These upgrades can also go in unusual directions, such as a gravity boost that will let you drive straight up the walls on certain parts of the track. What's cool about these engine upgrades is that you'll continue to stack them on top of each other as you progress through the tournament.

Unfortunately, even with a fully upgraded car, the racing in Mini Madness just isn't very good. The problem is obvious from the very first race: The gameplay is floaty because the cars have no weight to them. Your vehicle with bounce around the level as if it's made of paper, constantly rolling over and flying through the air in uncontrollable ways. And it's not that I'm looking for perfect physics or realism, but it gets so bad that there were times when I wondered if any of this was happening on Earth.

The floatiness is only made worse by the terrible course designs. While it's true that D6 Team got the look and locations right, that does not extend to the track layout. For what is supposed to be a fast-paced racing game, Mini Madness goes out of its way to punish players for going too fast. The stages are filled with jumps, turns and switch-ups that seem like they are specifically designed to get you stuck in the environment. There's a course where we jump straight into a foosball table, with predictable results. It gets to the point where you'll have to play each of the stages multiple times just to memorize the obstacles, which is only made worse when you have missiles and bullets flying at you in the weapon rounds.

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But even when you're not getting stuck in a bunch of household items, the game still finds a way to make the driving less fun. Most of the levels are designed with long, boring stretches that are high up in the air. Normally, that wouldn't be a problem, but because this is the kind of racing game where just about anything can send you flipping uncontrollably through the air, I was always a little anxious when I was that high above the ground. One wrong turn will send you flying way off course and make catching back up practically impossible. That's frustrating.

The maddening thing about Mini Madness is that so many of the elements are here for a great tabletop racing game. With better handling, less floaty gameplay and a few tweaks to the level designs, you would have a genuinely fun racer that perfectly captures the fun of driving tiny cars through a cluttered house. It's a killer idea that is just waiting to be done right. Unfortunately, Mini Madness crashes and burns somewhere between the cereal boxes and the toaster oven.