Do you enjoy cars and/or go-karts? How about the mechanic side of that? If so, then Gearhead Karting Simulator, by Gearhead Studio might be a good game for you.

You start off in your garage with a To-Do list. First things first, you need to get a go-kart, so you go to the market which is conveniently located right outside your side door. You are instructed on which kart to buy, then you go back to your garage and start the repairs. You get to purchase new parts, place them on the kart, and even have to use your drill and impact wrench to attach them. Once that is done, don’t forget the fuel and oil. From there you can do some trial runs to test out your new kart, or even just sit in there and rev the engine for pure enjoyment.

After you’ve gotten in some practice, you can move into a few different types of races. You’ve got your Grand Prix and Timed Trials, or you can even show off your drifting skills to make some more cash. You can use your cash to buy paint, and different parts, or get a couple of different karts that you can fix up and race.

Don’t think that the work ends once you put your kart together, you have to keep an eye on the status of every part of it. Do a lot of drifting? Watch those tires. Constantly running into curbs? Better make sure you repair your bumper once in a while. Definitely don’t forget about fuel, it wouldn’t be good to run out mid-race. Also, keep in mind that while you can repair the parts, they will eventually break. Once they do break, they will be gone and you will have to replace them.

Installing Parts on Your New Cart

As far as the mechanics of the game go, overall, I like them. They are pretty straightforward, and you can use either the keyboard or a controller. I did try the game with both and definitely prefer the controller at the very least for actual races. That said, I did have to play around to figure out a few things. First, when putting parts back on the car, I initially thought that I needed to get them as close as possible to where they physically went. I soon discovered that instead, I needed to line the cursor up with the part name. Also, painting wasn’t explained in the tutorial, so I was on my own there but knew I wanted that pink bumper and sideskirt. From what I can tell through trial and error, you leave the part on the car and use the same button or key you would use to attach a part or use a tool. It does seem that some of the parts need to be on, but not fully attached to paint them. Again, this was purely through my own experimentation, so don’t quote me on that!

I really enjoyed the visuals in this game. The graphics are good and make you feel like you are really in your garage. Plus the garage door is open and it is always a beautiful sunny day, it doesn’t get much better than that. If they added a radio that you could play your own music through, I’d be the happiest girl in town!

Just Working in the Garage on a Beautiful Day!

Overall, this game is pretty cool as a relaxing time passer. I don’t see myself sitting and playing it for hours on end, but I am sure there are some that could really get into the building and customizing of multiple karts. The racing is fun, but there isn’t a whole lot of variety thus far. It might also be cool if there was a multiplayer feature so you were playing against other actual racers. So far beating the AI is not even close to a challenge, so the main reason to do it is just to make money to buy more carts and/or parts. I believe if it was more challenging, it there would be a lot more replayability and reason to play for longer periods of time in general. Also, while you only see the back of your character while driving, I do kind of wish I could customize them. Let me at least get my pink outfit to match my kart or something. Just saying…

It is clear that a lot of time and energy went into making this game as realistic as possible, and in my opinion, they have done a good job at that. I would like to have a little more challenging game play though. Honestly, for the price, I say go for it, as it is great for a stress-free time passer.