Emoji Kart Racer is a standard, run of the mill arcade racer. This game was published and developed by Joindots, who also have 7 other games published, with 6 of those being games they also developed. This game does pay for the trademarked branding of emoji but has their own spin on the designs. They are ones you’d recognize easily but are reskinned. There are 20 total emojis to select from and you unlock them by completing Tournaments. Tournaments are grand prix where you must win a series of races while being rewarded with points. The starting difficulty is going to be Easy, and you will gradually unlock higher difficulties as you finish tournaments.
The gameplay is racing through tournaments to unlock all emojis and vehicles, while they seem to perform the same from my experience. There are 10 unique vehicles to select from for your emoji to drive and 10 different colors for the body of the vehicle. There is no other customization other than the difficulties of three options. Easy, Normal, and Insane are available after some minor progression and after finishing all the tournaments on all three options, the only variance between them is the amount of leniency and boosts given to the lead AI. The AI in this title is very slow, they were creating this title to tailor an easy going experience for children to play. As I played insane I was often forced to ride bumper with the lead AI until they made a mistake. Fortunately, they made mistakes early on in each track so I was able to gain distance and never had to worry about losing. The items are placed all throughout the tracks and have roughly 5 from a pool that can be awarded. You use these items with the right bumper but must manually align your rockets if you’re wanting to hit anyone.
Besides avoiding other emoji’s items like poop, rockets, & tornados, you must avoid obstacles placed on the tracks. Most of these obstacles fit with the theme of the level, but the whirlwinds on the track Vortex in Time, feel like a huge setback if you get caught in them. You’re forced to sit and wait until the tornado completes its pathing animation before being able to move or fully respawn again. The respawn functionality is a godsend in this game. Quite honestly, it is game breaking at times. If you are doing a jump to hit a boost ring or pad, the physics could thwart you into a wall. Simply pressing B at any point will respawn the vehicle going a moderate speed. This encourages the player to make mistakes with no consequences. Bad physics off of a jump? Just respawn. Hit with an item? Just respawn.
There is very little substance here to maintain a racer enthusiast’s attention. This game could have benefited from a more polished drifting mechanic. I was shocked to not find a smooth drifting layout. The handbrake, even if tapped briefly, will quickly slow the kart down. This in turn makes the drift you had set up for short lived. The only good way I found to drift was to lay into a turn full throttle and tap the stick to steer. There is no boost or true gain from drifting other than avoiding the wall and maintaining speed. There were only a couple tracks where the AI put up any challenge and those were the longer tracks. On Insane difficulty the AI was hitting every boost even when directly behind me after I had used the only available boost. They were buffed to catch up, but failed to use the shortcuts 90% of the time.
The audio for the game was lacking, the sound effects sound royalty free but aren’t. The victory screams are so loud, they drown out the music and sound amplified. The levels could have been lowered. It provided a decent jump scare and good laugh the first time, but lost its charm quickly. Each track did have a unique song that would play. They were all short songs and were intended to be looped with the pace of an average lap. Most of the tracks were short, but the later tournaments required more laps per cup, and made some tracks take several minutes to finish out. This is due to the slow pacing of the karts.
The longevity of this Kart Racer is sadly only a few hours if wanting to win each tournament on all difficulties. There are 4 to work your way through with three difficulties. With 16 total tracks offered, that’s about 48 races total with laps varying per cup. That’s not too many races when it takes only a few minutes for most tracks. There are single races to select from, but no other game modes to enjoy.
Conclusion
Emoji Kart Racer lacks in content that is offered for the pricing they have selected. The sounds are if not annoying, the best part of the game. The music isn’t too short or too loud, except for the emoji’s sound effects for winning. The visuals are clean, colorful, and work for most levels. There are tracks influenced heavily by bigger, more well known Arcade racers. There are typos in some signage which I don’t think is intentional. The length of the time played is less than four hours and could have been shorter if the karts went a little faster. The AIs and respawning functionality removes all challenges. This title is for beginners and those who are younger. Had there been a better user interface for using items and targeting others and the scaled difficulty wasn’t so low, this could have been a worthy recommendation. The drifting was the biggest let down, or lack thereof. I was simply left wanting more from the control and handling. The design of the game was well done, just not the feel of how the kart rides.
This game was reviewed based on Xbox S|X review code, using an Xbox S|X console. All of the opinions and insights here are subject to that version. Game provided by publisher.