Star Wars: Galactic Racer Run-Based Campaign & Story Trailer Details

If you've been keeping tabs on Star Wars: Galactic Racer, there's a solid chunk of new information worth going through. A brand new story trailer dropped during Summer Game Fest last week, physical pre-orders are now live, and there are some solid details around the game's editions and what each one gets you. So let's get into all of it.

Star Wars: Galactic Racer is being developed by Fuse Games, a studio you might not have heard of before, but here's the thing: it's made up of developers who previously worked at Criterion, the studio behind the Burnout series. If you know anything about arcade racers, you know that's a seriously good pedigree.

Criterion built some of the best arcade racing games ever made, so having that same talent working on a Star Wars racing game is reason enough to be optimistic.

Given that Star Wars: Galactic Racer is leaning hard into that arcade racing feel, the connection makes a lot of sense. Now, the story trailer that dropped at Summer Game Fest gives you your first real look at what the game's campaign is actually about. The setup centers around a character named Shade, a mysterious pilot with a personal history against a racing family called the Bool family.

The reigning champion of the Galactic League is Kestar Bool, talented and corrupt in equal measure — who uses his position at the top to intimidate other pilots and extend his control over the league. Darius Pax, the league's founder, brings Shade in specifically to take Kestar down. Helping Shade along the way are an engineer named Hibi and, notably, a certain legendary podracer who makes an appearance in the campaign.

The structure of Star Wars: Galactic Racer's campaign is worth paying attention to because it's not a straightforward linear experience. It's run-based, meaning you carve your own path through the Galactic League, picking between different events as you move forward. Every decision matters because if you crash out too many times during a tour, you wreck out and have to start that run over again.

Certain perks and unlocks carry over between runs, but you begin each new tour fresh, which should give the game some real replayability over time. Between races, you'll be spending time in the paddock, where other pilots hang out, trade challenges, and offer support. Each planet's paddock also features Shade's mechanic, Hibi, who runs a workshop where you can fit your racer with new parts, either ones you've earned through racing or ones you buy directly from her.

Those parts come with stat boosts and abilities you can build around depending on how you like to race.

This gives you a reason to think about your loadout rather than just jumping into the next event. The game also introduces a location called Derven Acos, which is the Galactic League's showpiece arena. It's a custom-built track that pulls together every planetary condition from across the tour into a single, unforgiving gauntlet. Think of it as the final test, a track designed to push everything you've built and learned throughout the campaign to its absolute limit.

On top of the campaign, Star Wars: Galactic Racer includes podracing as a key component of the experience. If you want to jump straight into podracing without going through the story first, the arcade mode lets you do exactly that. There are also unique podracer-focused online multiplayer events planned, which is something that hasn't really existed in this form before, so that's a notable addition for fans of that side of the Star Wars universe.

Now, the release date for Star Wars: Galactic Racer is set for October 6th. Physical pre-orders are live right now, with the base game coming in at $59.99, not $70, which is worth noting. The physical version's box art doesn't carry any disclaimer about a required download, which strongly suggests this is going to be a complete, all-content-on-disc release.

That's good news, especially when you compare it to Star Wars Zero Company, another upcoming Star Wars title, which is not going all-content-on-disc. Both the base game and the deluxe edition come with a pre-order bonus in the form of an exclusive livery for your repulsorcraft, which works across landspeeders, speeder bikes, and skim speeders. There's also a bonus player banner you can use in multiplayer.

One thing to flag is that PC pre-orders get an additional orange livery that console players don't, which feels a bit arbitrary, but it's worth knowing about.

The deluxe edition runs $20 more than the base game and packs in a few things worth considering. You get three additional vehicles exclusive to that edition: the DarkX landspeeder, the CCT speeder bike, and the RAK skim speeder. Alongside those vehicles, you get three deluxe arcade events built specifically around those vehicles, with target times to beat.

There's also a deluxe livery pack with designs inspired by the Naboo starfighter, a deluxe player banner pack for multiplayer, and an 80-page digital art book featuring development artwork from Fuse Games. If you buy the base game and later decide you want the deluxe content, it'll be available as a paid upgrade at launch.

That's not the most consumer-friendly setup given that the extra vehicles come with their own exclusive events, but it's worth noting that Star Wars: Galactic Racer will not feature microtransactions or a season pass of any kind. For a Star Wars racing game, that's a meaningful commitment; there were plenty of opportunities to monetize this thing far more aggressively, so the decision to keep it straightforward deserves some credit.

For those who want a physical collector's edition, there's one available through the official website that includes a steelbook case with sleeve, a collector's edition box, a landspeeder model, a physical art book, pilot patches, and a key star banner.

Star Wars: Galactic Racer launches October 6th. System requirements beyond some placeholder minimums haven't been confirmed yet, so more details are still on the way as the summer goes on. Between the Criterion DNA behind the studio, the arcade-first design philosophy, and the nostalgia factor of bringing podracing back in a modern form, there's a lot working in favor of Star Wars: Galactic Racer heading into release day.