Not one, but two games based around racing drones are coming out this year for PlayStation 4. One, DCL – The Game, was announced back in August. Today it got an official release date of February 18th, 2020, and will also be coming to PC and Xbox One. The other is Liftoff: Drone Racing, which launched on PC back in 2018 but will officially be making its way to PlayStation 4 and Xbox One sometime this year.
DCL – The Game is an official sponsored product of the Drone Championship League. It’s being developed by Climax Studios and published by THQ Nordic. While the game tries to get flying drones right, it leans a little more arcadey in its design. It has a built-in arcade modes for beginners, and fantastical courses that wouldn’t really be possible to fly in real life. After all, no one wants a drone weaving between a working ski lift. THQ Nordic notes that the top 200 players will be invited to compete in real-world DCL events.
As for Liftoff: Drone Racing, the game came out in 2018 to very positive reviews and has continued development for quite some time. The game is developed by LuGus Studios and will be published by Astragon Entertainment. Liftoff focuses a lot on the simulation side of things, a large part of the game will involve customizing your drone, and races can only be played in first-person like actual real life drone races would be. (Editor’s Note: We received clarification that races can be played in either first or third-person in Liftoff.) LuGus has promised that the console version will come with some new features not seen on the PC, but that they aren’t quite ready to announce them yet.
Most of the arcadey racers available generally deal with animals driving go-karts, different animals driving cars, or non-descript humanoids driving other sorts of four-wheeled vehicles. Drone racing is a unique niche of the genre that hasn’t gotten much, if any, love on consoles, but that’s set to change soon.
