High Octane Drift

High Octane Drift is a racing title built around progression, you start with limited funds and work your way up by winning events, taking on challenges, and investing your earnings back into your garage. The core appeal is tinkering, you can assemble and tune cars in detail (including engine parts and gear ratios), then take those builds online to see how they stack up.

Publisher: Cruderocks
Playerbase: Low
Type: Racing
Release Date: October 11, 2016
Pros: +Supports races with up to 32 drivers. +Deep car building and tuning with 1,000+ parts. +Multiple event types plus rotating daily challenges.
Cons: -Little to no recent support. -Very small active community. -Persistent bugs that have lingered. -Includes pay-to-win style advantages.

Overview

High Octane Drift Overview

High Octane Drift is designed around the idea that everyone begins at the same starting line financially, then builds a name through racing results and smart spending. Money earned from events feeds directly into upgrades and new builds, which makes the game feel part racer, part garage simulator. If you enjoy dialing in a setup, the tuning options go beyond cosmetics, letting you swap parts and adjust performance-related details such as suspension behavior and gearing to match specific tracks and driving styles.

Customization is one of the headline features, with more than a thousand parts available to mix and match. On top of mechanical choices, players can create their own liveries and share them, and the game leans into community involvement through discussions around car models and setups. The track selection aims to push different approaches, so a drift-friendly build may not automatically excel on layouts that reward stability and acceleration. For players who like organized competition, there are sponsor contracts to pursue, daily challenges for extra rewards, and team play for group-focused racing.

High Octane Drift Key Features:

  • Starting From Zero – begin with minimal resources and expand your garage by earning cash through racing.
  • Extensive Car Building – assemble and tune vehicles with 1,000+ parts, from performance components to fine adjustments.
  • Track Variety – different circuits encourage different builds, lines, and driving priorities.
  • Teams and Group Competition – form a team and take part in racing where coordination and shared goals matter.
  • Large Races and Events enter events and championships that can include up to thrity-two drivers.

High Octane Drift Screenshots

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High Octane Drift Featured Video

High Octane Drift fanmade promo by CAHEKXXX - customization

Full Review

High Octane Drift Review

High Octane Drift has a clear identity: it is a racing game for players who get as much satisfaction from building and tuning a car as they do from driving it. The promise is compelling, earn money, improve your machine piece by piece, and bring that evolving build into online events. At its best, it delivers that classic “one more upgrade, one more run” loop where you chase better times and cleaner drifts while experimenting with setups.

The strongest part of the experience is the customization focus. With a large parts pool and tuning options that include things like gear ratios, the game encourages trial and error and rewards players who pay attention to how changes affect handling. It is the kind of system where you can build a car that feels tailored to you, then keep iterating as you learn what each track demands. The livery tools and community sharing also help add personality to the garage side of the game, which is important in a title that leans heavily on player expression.

On the competitive side, features like events, championships, daily challenges, and team play suggest a broader structure than simple quick races. The inclusion of races with up to 32 players is another big selling point, at least on paper, because larger lobbies can create the busy, unpredictable energy that makes online racing memorable. Sponsor contracts add a light progression layer that fits well with the game’s “race to fund the build” premise.

Where High Octane Drift struggles is longevity and reliability. The current reality is that the playerbase is labeled low, which can make it harder to consistently find lively online competition or a healthy variety of opponents. On top of that, the game has a reputation for long-standing bugs and a lack of meaningful updates in recent years, which is a major issue for any multiplayer-focused racer. Even if the core driving and building loop appeals to you, technical rough edges and limited ongoing support can make the experience feel unfinished or inconsistent.

The other sticking point is balance. With pay-to-win elements mentioned by the community, the sense of fair progression can be undermined if spending can translate into measurable advantages. In a game that is built around earning your way up, anything that shortcuts that climb risks weakening the satisfaction of improvement and competition.

High Octane Drift is easiest to recommend to players who primarily want a sandbox-like car building and tuning experience and are comfortable treating online play as a bonus rather than the main attraction. If you are looking for an actively supported competitive racer with a large, thriving matchmaking pool, the age of the build and the small community are significant drawbacks. Still, for tinkerers who enjoy dialing in a setup and experimenting with parts, there is a solid concept at the center that remains appealing.

System Requirements

High Octane Drift System Requirements

Minimum Requirements:

Operating System: Windows 7
CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo with 3.0GHz or AMD Athlon 64 X2 6400+ with 3.2GHz
Video Card: nVIDIA GeForce GTX 260 with 512 MB or ATI Radeon HD 5670 with 512 MB
RAM: 2 GB
Hard Disk Space: 1024 MB

Recommended Requirements:

Operating System: Windows 7
CPU: Intel Core i5-3470 with 3.20GHz or AMD FX-6300 with 3.5Ghz
Video Card: nVIDIA GeForce GTX 660 with 2 GB or AMD Radeon HD 7870 with 2 GB
RAM: 6 GB
Hard Disk Space: 1024 MB

Music

High Octane Drift Music & Soundtrack

Coming soon!

Additional Info

High Octane Drift Additional Information

Developer(s): Cruderocks
Publisher(s): Cruderocks

Language(s): English, Russian

Steam Greenlight Post Date: February 9, 2016
Steam Greenlight Award Date: March 2016

Early Access: October 11, 2016

Development History / Background:

High Octane Drift is a racing game developed and published by Cruderocks. It originally appeared in 2015 through a web-based client, before the team shifted focus toward raising overall quality and making the competitive side stronger. The project later went to Steam Greenlight in February 2016, was approved not long after, and then launched into Early Access in October 2016.