| Rara Racer | |
|---|---|
 death | |
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Developers |
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Released |
2008 |
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Genre |
racing, art game, meta game, let's play |
|
Modes |
single player |
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Platforms |
Windows, Mac |
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Input |
keyboard |
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Website |
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Rara racer was Increpare's entry into Ludum Dare 13. It's a racing game which is also a Let's Play of itself: with a Let's Play voiceover (e.g. every time the player dies the voice curses), internet popups, an instant messaging chat box, a fake YouTube style visuals with a progress bar, and so on. It's notable for being humorous, unexpected, and meta.
Gameplay[]
thumb|320px|right|The complete Rara Racer (spoilers!)The player controls the game while the Let's Player (with recorded voice) narrates what the player is doing. At certain times, events in the Let's Player's life affect the player: for instance, if their cat steps on their keyboard, the player's car speeds up, seemingly out of control.
It is possible to beat the game without dying (although it involves somehow avoiding a complete line of cones from top to bottom, a nearly impossible task), but what matters is only how long the player plays: after the Let's Play reaches the end of the progress bar, the game is over, regardless of how many times the player has died.
Trivia[]
- TubGirl55, one of the people in the IM window covering up part of the game screen, is a real person on YouTube.
- The game is also frequently referred to as Ra Ra Racer, although Increpare himself uses Rara racer.
Reception[]
Greg Costikyan admired the game, saying "But what's brilliant, in a way that generates a certain degree of intellectual dislocation is that you do, in fact, play the racing game -- and the narration changes in response to what happens in the game. E.g., if you collide with an obstacle, the narrator may well say "Oh, fuck," as if he had just had that crash. Indeed, the narration seems amazingly seamless and appropriate to what you see as you play, which is no mean trick."
Raph Koster also called it brilliant, saying "There are games about games. Then there’s games about gaming. And then games about how we live our lives. Rara Racer is one of those latter ones."
Anthony Burch wrote "I'm not sure if Rara Racer is saying anything in particular -- and I really don't care. The game is so damned clever, and so damned funny, and examines the ridiculous new fad of people recording themselves playing and commentating on videogames."
Commentary on blogs was also almost universally positive, although a few people noted that they didn't realize they could press space to begin the game (in the game's embedded YouTube video), thinking that, because it was a video in-game, that they couldn't control it. One commentator wrote "I thought it was less of a critique of games and more of a critique of how little attention most people pay to things today. We’re surrounded by distractions, and it takes a good effort to focus for any length of time. Most people just don’t bother resisting, and it makes it much harder to enjoy things well."
External links[]
- rara racer
- playthisthing.com - Greg Costikyan's review of it for PlayThisThing.
- raphkoster.com - Raph Koster review.
- destructoid.com - Anthony's review on Destructoid.
- indiegames.com - TimW's review.
- tigsource.com - Terry's review.