Watch: ‘Throttle Powah’ is a Crazy VR Racer That Gives You Motorbikes for Arms

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Early in development, Throttle Powah is a promising looking multiplayer racer with a VR locomotion mechanic which seems entirely unique and more than a little insane.

It’s refreshing to watch the still young virtual reality development community flourish, not least thanks to creators that are willing to throw caution to the wind and create things we’ve never seen before. Thanks to VR motion controllers, we’re seeing innovative ways to move around synthetic worlds on an almost weekly basis. But there’s been none recently that have made me smile more than Throttle Powah.

The game’s at an extremely early stage in development, but its core mechanic is in place. In short, your in-game avatar possesses two powered unicycles for arms and its with these you speed your way around the physics defying ‘tracks’. Tilt your virtual arms to steer and launch yourself into the air by lowering your arms and perhaps add a little sideways flick to freestyle some stunts while you’re at it.

The developer’s Steam and Facebook pages state an early version of the title is available for download right now, however it seems to be currently AWOL from Itch.IO as of now. However, it is stated that the game has now received a Greenlight from the Steam community and that a new version of the game will appear in the next few days.

Clearly Throttle Powah is at a pre-alpha stage right now, with little to no structured gameplay in place, but the central gameplay mechanic seems like solid, original and genuinely fun idea and, frankly, I wanted to share with Road to VR readers. The game seems to channel the essence of Geoff Crammond’s 8/16 bit classic Stunt Car Racer with perhaps a dash of the cult SNES classic Uniracers and Tony Hawks thrown in for good measure.

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Follow along with Throttle Powah‘s development at their Steam page here, or via their Facebook page here.

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Based in the UK, Paul has been immersed in interactive entertainment for the best part of 27 years and has followed advances in gaming with a passionate fervour. His obsession with graphical fidelity over the years has had him branded a ‘graphics whore’ (which he views as the highest compliment) more than once and he holds a particular candle for the dream of the ultimate immersive gaming experience. Having followed and been disappointed by the original VR explosion of the 90s, he then founded RiftVR.com to follow the new and exciting prospect of the rebirth of VR in products like the Oculus Rift. Paul joined forces with Ben to help build the new Road to VR in preparation for what he sees as VR’s coming of age over the next few years.
  • This basically makes you one of those creepy wheeler guys from Return to Oz. :-o

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WM0RFE3QGAU

    • Diego Beltran

      Omg, there is a great easter egg on this video to put ingame! Thanks!!

    • George Vieira IV

      Was thinking the same thing.

  • Nice. Kinda reminds me of the old CS surf maps.

  • Firestorm185

    It’s not the main page but I did find a buy link on Itch –

    https://dibeltran.itch.io/throttlepowah/devlog/774/first-step-done

    • Raphael

      There is no but link. Never was. Game it’s only alpha.

    • Diego Beltran

      Hey Robbie, developer here =D!
      To prevent me having to deal with 2 stores, i took the game out of itch.io! But of course, I’ve send an email to everyone who bought the game with a Steam Key, so this action shouldn’t make anyome mad =D.
      Game will release on Steam this week as early access! There is also a new trailler: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c0TrzHhO3Nw
      Cheers!

      • Firestorm185

        Okidokie! ^^ Wasn’t sure if the author of this article was just having trouble finding the link or if you actually took it down on purpose. Thanks for clearing that up! Looking forward to the early access release! ^^

  • Diego Beltran

    Paul James, thank you very much for this review! There is also a new game trailer:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c0TrzHhO3Nw

  • Nagoia

    Ohhhh SNAP!! Congrats bro! =) Love the game

    • Nagoia

      And the new trailer… <3

  • Mauricio Tunes

    <3 Amazing Game!!!!!!!!!

  • Lucidfeuer

    Looks fun

  • Very nice idea! I love how people find each day a new way of using the VR controllers…

  • Lamebird

    Reminds me of Kinetica from the PS2