Screamer’s game director wants to keep things “always running, always fast”

“We don’t want to make the flow of a game that gets interrupted. So everything has to be always running, always fast.” That seems to be the core of Screamer, the upcoming anime-style arcade racer from Milestone Srl, makers of Ride 6, according to its director, Michele Caletti, who previously directed Hot Wheels Unleashed.

I sat down with Caletti to talk about Screamer’s layered gameplay, from the reasons behind its adoption of twin-stick drifting to its fighting game inspirations. However, Screamer isn’t just a high-octane experience; it’s also got a legacy and history behind it. As Caletti put it, this new game is “trying to take the principles of Screamer and developing them from scratch today”. 

Overall, Caletti paints a picture of a game with a lot going on for experts and plenty to entice casual players when Screamer releases on March 26.

Keep things moving

One of the biggest differences between Screamer and a lot of other racing games is its use of a twin-stick drifting system, where the left stick controls direction, and the right stick controls the depth of the drift. 

Caletti noted that “in many racing games, the drift is connected to breaking”, but he believed that  “in games like Ridge Racer, you just want to slow down, but you find yourself drifting”.

“Decoupling the breaking or any other control from drifting is fundamental to being free to experiment”, he said, and “in a couple of races, you get used to it.” Trying it out myself, he was exactly right, and it was a huge part of managing to keep speed in the race.

He wanted something “that was easy, but substantial, and that could leave room for an expert level.” At the core of the arcade experience, he believed that “everything you build is upon the foundations of the track design”. 

The nuanced drifting ties into this, as “if you take some corners without drifting, you can gain a slight margin, but you have to know which corners that’s suited to”. Caletti said, “There’s a basic layer with everyone being able to approach the game, and then you discover there are some nuances where you can build your skills.”

Fighting dreamers

Screamer’s concept started “from the characters and the team”, in particular, that they were “in teams, like fighting games”. Racing is only half of Screamer, where much of its mechanics are set up to allow the racers to fight each other, much like Kirby Air Riders.

“All the characters have their own special abilities,” Caletti said, “Like in fighting games, if you get to know those and you can exploit them, you can get more in sync with some of those characters”. At the core of Screamer is the idea that “if you experiment, you understand, you learn.”

There are quite a few mechanics, including the new style of drifting and managing the Sync resource to boost, and Caletti admits that “if you go in full blast aiming to perfectly nail things, it can be intensive”. 

However, there are “some accessibility supports built into the game”. Caletti notes, “You’re not forced to do all the actions perfectly. For example, you accumulate Sync passively. Tuning the difficulty of the game also allows you to ease up a bit of pressure.” 

To Caletti, it’s important to make Screamer a game “everyone can approach, but you can make the difference.” “Very experienced players can do very, very advanced things”, and it will be interesting to see how high the skill ceiling goes.

Making an impression

To Caletti, making Screamer was more than just reviving a long-dead game franchise. “I started thinking about what made Screamer unique back then, and not literally take those elements but convey them in a modern form.”

 Caletti noted that “Screamer was very easy to identify from one screenshot,” but wondered “how can you do it today when there are more games, and more variation on the theme?”

So Caletti and his team worked on a “unique visual style that could be immediately recognisable” and landed on a strong anime influence. 

“The nice part is that we were on the same track of the same era with the same bulk of Anime references, and then everyone wanted to propose things that could fit in,” Caletti said. Even Fermi, reminiscent of the corgi from Cowboy Bebop, was “the dog of the associative creative director. It’s even been dubbed by the real dog.”

Screamer’s distinct style is so important that the game fights to secure it even in customisation. “We opted not to introduce the usual Livery editor we have in other games, because we didn’t want people to create something completely off-tone.” 

Caletti “wanted to preserve the tone and the idea behind every driver”, but still noted, “there’s a lot you can do in terms of mix and match”.

Cyberpunk Kart World

While the story of Screamer takes place in an underground racing tournament arc, it’s not all fun and games. Caletti mentioned that Screamer had “a traumatised world that we wanted to somehow present”, and that the background “doesn’t always put you in a feeling like you’re in an easy place.”

“Obviously, given the sources of inspiration, the urban Cyberpunk-ish reference was very present,” Caletti explained, “but we didn’t want to make an Akira racing game.” Screamer doesn’t just take place in the main city, Neo Rey, as “the thought of blending different locations is to broaden the palette.”

Caletti said that while it’s “not explicitly told in the game, everything has a reason.” The different regions of Screamer have a backstory, like Neo Rey popping up because “San Francisco has been destroyed” by an earthquake. That same earthquake also recently created the desert biome where many of the tracks are located.

Even the more lush Sequoia forest has this unnatural story behind it, as it was “moved to another place to save it”.  Screamer’s team has its world worked out, all to create the best tracks and support its story mode when it releases on March 26.

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