The team behind the Tiny Game Chronicles podcast takes a look at a game they covered in a previous month’s episode. For August, Marcus delves into Wabisabi Sushi Derby by following their usual podcast format. Subscribe to The Tiny Game Chronicles podcast for their fortnightly episodes on short-form video games, and please make sure to check out the accompanying episode to this article on Wabisabi Sushi Derby.
Wabisabi Sushi Derby, by ITAMAE Studios, is a game that’s as absurd as it sounds. In it you play a chef who must mold, train, and, of course, race sushi, with the ultimate goal of winning the Galaxy Cup and immortalizing yourself amongst the greatest sushi chefs on earth. Also, aliens are involved.
It’s exactly the kind of “weird” premise we like tackling on Tiny Game Chronicles. Combined with the adorable pixel art, and the prospect of playing a racing game, something we’d yet to do for the show, I was all-in when Michael suggested covering it for the podcast
High-Level thoughts
After spending roughly 4 hours with Wabisabi, my feelings on the game are quite mixed. While no doubt it is charming and I liked a lot about the loop for upgrading my sushi racer, there were several aspects of the game that felt like misses. My biggest hangup was the fact that you don’t actually control your sushi’s movement during the races. The truth is Wabisabi is less a racing game and more a management sim with a racing game skin. There are also times the game’s balancing feels off. Your progress being partially wiped out felt unnecessarily punitive, but at least the races were short, so having to begin from scratch wasn’t overly time-consuming.
Overall, I would say there are much worse ways to spend five bucks, but Wabisabi didn’t quite hit the highs I was hoping for when I first loaded it up.
Wabisabi Sushi Derby Standouts
The first standout is probably the most obvious: Wabisabi’s absurd and memorable concept. Aliens have come to earth, discovering (and naturally falling head over heels for) sushi. And somehow this leads people training and racing adorable sushi with smiling faces around a restaurant countertop in some type of Hunger Games-style (pun intended) competition to prove who the world’s best sushi chef is. Truly I would have loved to be in the room when this idea was hatched. It doesn’t need to make sense, and it’s all the more delightful for it.
For the second standout, we need to talk a little bit about how the sushi is raced, specifically the lack of control the player has while racing their sushi. I’m embarrassed to admit that it took me nearly an hour of playing Wabisabi before I even realized that you don’t actually control the direction of your sushi during races. It’s not like I couldn’t tell I wasn’t able to easily maneuver around obstacles, but at times it seemed as though my sushi was sluggishly responding to my directional inputs. In reality, the sushi race around the track automatically based on their attributes (more on that later). The only thing you’re controlling during races is when to hit the speed burst button and when to use the occasional ability that some late-game sushi have, like dropping roe or spraying ink to slow down your opponents. All this makes Wabisabi more a racing simulator than a racing game, which isn’t inherently a bad thing, but I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t disappointed by this design choice. I wanted to be able to guide my little guys around the track. And it was incredibly frustrating watching them bump into wine glasses that should have been easy to avoid. It gave the game a distinct “mobile feel,” yet to my knowledge it is not available nor has it been announced for mobile platforms.
The third standout is related to the aforementioned attributes of your sushi and how you ultimately create sushi that stands a chance in the later game races; Wabisabi’s surprisingly deep upgrade loop.
It works like this. You purchase a sushi from a wide choice of (delicious-looking!) options, each with different baseline attributes—things like top speed, acceleration, and explosive power. Winning races awards you prize money, which can be used to purchase more expensive sushi with better attributes. Win or lose, your sushi will also gain experience, which improves those baseline attributes too.
But hey, there’s more!
In between races you can opt to ‘train’ your sushi. Training involves selecting 3 cards from a random deck. These cards will permanently boost your sushi’s attributes or provide some type of ability, like reducing the frequency of chopsticks appearing (which can take you out of the race) or racing the final loop at a slightly faster pace. Some of these decks are free, but the best ones cost money, which means if you really want to boost your stats, expect to pay for it.
But still, there’s more!
Like in real life, sushi has a shelf life. Nobody wants to eat sushi that’s been sitting in a fridge for a week. Such is also true when racing sushi. After every race your sushi’s quality degrades, meaning each of its attributes goes down slightly. And you’re only able to race your sushi for a maximum of 5 days.
For me the upgrade loop is probably the best part of Wabisabi. It’s fun to pull cards and “build” your optimal racing sushi. I found myself quite enjoying the strategy of choosing which sushi to race, mixing and matching upgrades, and deciding how much money I wanted to spend training my sushi before it expired.
However, it wasn’t perfect. Because your sushi degrades and the cards you select to improve your sushi’s attributes are random, it wasn’t uncommon for any boosts I’d received to be completely wiped out after the race. Two steps forward, one step back. This loop leads to a surprising amount of grinding for a game as short as Wabisabi is. Knowing that at least some of your upgrades are going to be negated after every race, when you plan to tackle that final sprint, it’s essential to purchase the best starting sushi and best upgrades during training. And for that, you need a lot of cash, which means going back to the earlier races and completing them over and over to build up your reserves. Fortunately races don’t last more than a couple of minutes, but even so, nearly half my total playtime was spent just trying to get my sushi to a point where I stood a chance to win it all.
Who Do I Recommend This To?
Wabisabi Sushi Derby is an incredibly charming, relatively low-stakes racing sim. It has a surprisingly deep, if somewhat flawed, system for upgrading your racer that requires strategy and some luck. If this sounds appealing, I would give it my recommendation. Just be warned. Do not go in, like I did, expecting a more traditional racing experience.
Check out Wabisabi Sushi Derby on Steam
