《Shifu: Traffic Masters》：设定在1990年代中国的欢乐开放世界驾驶游戏

(Not 100% guaranteed to be free of genAI or twerking)

I'm not your guy for computerised automobile magic picture shows, or "car videogames" as they are popularly known – for that, we turn fearfully to Mark Warren, whose every word during Gchat meetings is screamed against a backdrop of throbbing motors. Still, once in a blue moon a car game hooks my interest. Take Shifu: Traffic Masters, which we can approxiately translate as Driver and/or Midtown Madness (those are explicit inspirations), but set in northern China during the 1990s. It's got a demo on Steam. Cars emit steam, don't they? How poetic of them. Here's a trailer.

In Traffic Masters, you've got a selection of vehicular pursuits to choose from. You can haul cargo with real physics, chase down crims in a cop car, run a taxi service (don't jostle the passenger too much), drive a city bus with a timetable, and participate in full-blown arcade street racing. All the traditional car game foods. You'll be doing this in a city inconsiderately populated by other drivers, together with pedestrians and cyclists, in which weather affects the handling. You're free to explore said city between jobs, getting to grips with various low poly "period-correct '80s and '90s workhorses, each with its own weight and personality".

That's "personality" as in the unfathomable feeling that an inanimate object has wiles and foibles, rather than in the latter-day sense of a Muskian chatbot chauffeur. This is set in the previous millennium, remember, when machines were very often genuinely quite fun to be around. Although we did have actual "Traffic Masters", aka traffic congestion notifications with old-timey robot vocals. My dad had one that always seemed to think he was on the M25. On which note, there's no mention of generative AI on the Shifu: Traffic Masters Steam page, but in these Crazy times of publishers having to revise their Steam disclosures following a backlash, we must gaze at everything through narrowed eyes.

It comes in Chinese and English, and is the work of solo dev Boxy.Poly. There's no release date yet.