Resistor is a narrative RPG about competing in death races. That’s exciting enough to me in concept, but there’s a trailer below that finally shows what each of those halves look like. It includes: finely animated dialogue options, and frenetic races in which you can swing the back-end of your car to smash rival racers off the road.

There have been plenty of combat racers over the years, but I often find the genre a little underwhelming thanks to the difficulty of aiming weapons while driving around obstacles at speed. The most common fix for that seems to be auto-aim or heat-seeking projectiles, but Resistor seems to go a different direction by turning your entire vehicle into a melee weapon.

I’m also down with any game that wants to pair cars with heart-to-hearts from the passenger seat, as James described when he saw the game at EGX last month. He also played the driving bits, describing it as “fun as hell”, thanks in part to a Burnout-style boost meter that fills when you drive dangerously.

“This larger-than-life approach extends to the vehicular combat,” wrote James. “Again, it’s inspired by Burnout’s fender-bending car melees, much more so than the missiles and miniguns that the word “combat” usually evokes. Still, it’s exaggerated to the point of cartoonishness: attacks are essentially offensive doughnuts, your car’s rear bumper slamming into opponents with enough force to detonate them instantly.”

Resistor doesn’t have a stated release date yet, but is “coming soon” to Steam and other storefronts.