Disney Speedstorm

Disney Speedstorm is a free-to-play kart racing game developed by Gameloft Barcelona and published by Gameloft. It features various Disney and Pixar characters racing vehicles on tracks themed after the worlds of their films and franchises. The game was released in a pay-for early access on 18 April 2023 for Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Windows, Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S, with a soft launch on iOS and Android on 1 August 2023. The console and computer versions left early access on 28 September 2023, while the mobile version officially launched on 11 July 2024.

Gameplay
Disney Speedstorm is a free-to-play kart racing game with a roster composed of characters from various Disney properties, such as the Mickey and Friends, Pirates of the Caribbean, Monsters, Inc., Toy Story and Beauty and the Beast franchises, among others,      reimagined as race car drivers (referred to in-game as "Racers") in an in-universe arcade game also called Disney Speedstorm.

The gameplay is similar to Mario Kart. Racers, as the game refers to its playable characters, can drift to improve their cornering and charge their nitro boost, which can only be used when the boost meter full. Racers also get a small drift boost from long drifts (indicated by their tires glowing blue), which also gives them an extra boost charge. Racers can sideswipe other Racers to knock them aside, jump to reach higher grounds or dodge obstacles, offensive power-ups or other Racers, perform aerial stunts off designated jumps for a small speed boost upon landing, and grind on designated blue rails to also gain nitro boost. Racers can also pick up various power-ups, called "skills", by driving through sprites with the image of Arbee, the game's emotive AI mascot, on them. These skills include offensive weapons that stun Racers, shields that protect Racers from stuns, cloaks that make Racers intangible and invisible, nitro boost charges, rushes that provide sudden bursts of speed, and hacks that flip a Racer's screen, potentially confusing them. Skills can also be "charged" to cause different effects; for example, a charged shield allows a Racer to stun another Racer who drives into them, at the cost of not being protected from being stunned. The availability of the various skills depends on the Racer (except in "Single Skill" races, mentioned below); for example, some Racers can receive and use shields while others can receive and use cloaks.

Each Racer has a range of stats that affect their performance, including top speed, acceleration, handling, boost, and combat. The stats can be upgraded by leveling up Racers, which during the game's first six seasons of content updates, require spending various "upgrade parts" collected from single-player event races and PvP multiplayer; the game's seventh season will simplify this system by replacing upgrade parts with a new currency called "upgrade coins". However, Racer upgrade levels are capped to certain levels depending on their star levels, which require collecting "racer shards". Further stat boosts and other enhancements are provided by attaching "Crew Members" to a Racer, which feature images of various minor Disney characters on them. The Crew Members can only be applied to Racers of the same affiliated collections (franchises) as them, such as the Orange Bird serving as a Crew Member for Figment; with "Epic" rarity Crew Members being applicable to only one Racer.

Game modes
The game includes various different single-player and multiplayer modes. Single-player modes include "Starter Circuit", a series of events divided into chapters focusing on a single racer (specifically Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck and Goofy; Mulan, Hercules and Jack Sparrow previously had their own dedicated chapters during the first two seasons) that effectively serves as the game's "tutorial", limited events, which offer rewards for completing specific objectives or for getting a fast time on a leaderboard compared with other players online, and Season Tour, a limited-time campaign mode that changes each new content season. Multiplayer includes ranked multiplayer, where players race to earn points to unlock tiers of rewards for each of their unlocked Racers, regulated multiplayer, a separate ranked multiplayer (with its own set of rewards that change weekly) that puts all Racers at the same performance levels, "Private Track", which allows players to set up their own custom races online with friends or invited players, and "Local Freeplay", the game's only offline mode, which features custom races for one to four players (one or two players on older consoles) in split-screen multiplayer.

The races themselves are available in different types that feature different gimmicks: "Classic" is a traditional race; "Single Skill" forces all Racers to use the same power-up skill (usually an offensive item such as a mine); "Floating Objects" have speed boosts and power-up items floating above the ground, thus forcing Racers to jump to reach them; "Fog Challenge" covers the track in a dense fog—limiting visibility—and removes the minimap from the player's heads-up display; and "Last One Standing" is an elimination race where after a short (and declining) amount of time passes, the last place Racer either loses a "shield drone" and is teleported ahead on the track to try to avoid falling back to last or is eliminated if they have no more drones remaining. In the season two update in June 2023, the game added two new race types called "Color Match" and "Follow the Leader"; the former type forces players to pick up power-up items corresponding to one of two colors—green and purple—each of them is assigned to as indicated by the HUD and an underglow effect beneath their vehicle, switching between colors during the race, while the latter adds a long slipstream trail behind the race leader that provides a speed boost to the racers following the trail.

Characters and environments
As of June 2024, the game has a total of 63 playable characters, referred to as Racers, from seventeen Disney media franchises. Additionally, many franchises also have an affiliated track environment, each featuring multiple track layouts, with Mickey Mouse & Friends having two (one based on modern Mickey Mouse media and one based on black-and-white shorts such as Steamboat Willie), while Disney Speedstorm itself has an original environment called "Arbee's Arena".

The game also features a wide voice cast, most of whom reprise their respective characters from their original works. Beginning with Season 7: Sugar Rush, however, only selected new Racers will receive voice lines, with some unvoiced racers (like Calhoun and Fear, for example) getting voice lines later on.

Soundtrack
The music is done by a team of four musicians (Vincent Labelle, Nicholas Dubé, Francis Collard and Martin Courcy) remixing Disney and Pixar tunes.

Development and release
Disney Speedstorm is developed by Gameloft Barcelona, the developers of the Asphalt games 8: Airborne and Legends Unite, and was designed to be a high-speed racing game based on Disney's franchises and characters. It was made using the same game engine Asphalt 9: Legends used, Gameloft's in-house Jet Engine. Alexandru "Sasha" Adam, VP and studio manager, Gameloft Barcelona explained, "The gameplay mechanics, the racer abilities and the location design were all tailored to serve our vision of a fast and gripping competitive experience."

Announced in March 2023, the game was released in early access for Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Windows, Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S on 18 April 2023. A trailer for the game was released on 9 September 2022 at the D23 Expo.

On 30 June 2023, Gameloft announced that the game would leave early access, entering its intended free-to-play period, on 28 September 2023, following the conclusion of the game's third season.

On 1 August 2023, Gameloft soft launched the game on iOS and Android alongside the game's third season update. The soft launch began in Spain and Romania, with plans to expand the soft launch to the Philippines, Brazil, Vietnam, Mexico, Australia, Taiwan, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Austria, and Ireland over time. After an announcement on 6 June 2024, the mobile version was fully released on 11 July 2024.

Downloadable content
On 27 March 2023, Gameloft released a trailer announcing three "Founder's Packs" that would be available during the game's early access period. The Founder's Packs, which were required for early access, all contained Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck as unlocked racers (with the Deluxe Founder's Pack adding Mulan and the Ultimate Founder's Pack adding her, Hercules, and Jack Sparrow), plus a choice to immediately unlock Baloo, Belle, Beast, Elizabeth Swann, Li Shang, or Mowgli; Tokens (the game's premium currency; 4,000 Tokens for Standard, 7,000 for Deluxe, and 12,000 for Ultimate), two (or three for Ultimate) Golden Pass Credits (unlocking the Golden Pass, the game's battle pass system), exclusive racing suits and kart liveries for each of the immediately unlocked racers (depending on the player's chosen tier), exclusive Donald Duck kart wheels and wing (Ultimate only), and an exclusive player avatar and profile motto.

As a free-to-play title, all content in the game (apart from the Founder's Pack exclusives) is added via seasonal content updates, which are added approximately every two months. Each season adds four or five new racers from a newly added franchise of focus for that season, a new map based on that franchise, and new "bonus" racers mostly not affiliated with the season's focused-on franchise that are made available mid-season, as well as new crew members and customization options for the racers.

Reception
Disney Speedstorm received "mixed or average reviews", according to review aggregator Metacritic. 60% of critics recommended the game on review aggregator OpenCritic.

John Hansen of Push Square said while they had reservations with the free-to-play monetization, they thought the game had a lot of potential and summarised by saying "if you're a Disney fan, it's a good way to mash together some of your favorite old movies and battle it out on the racetrack."

Chris Scullion for Nintendo Life praised the gameplay but criticized the performance issues of the Switch version and felt that the game's monetization would deter some players. Luke Reilly of IGN found the game had too few tracks and was overly repetitive for its then-asking price, while criticizing its excessive monetization scheme.

Controversial changes to Golden Pass
On 9 April 2024, Gameloft announced in a community news update changes to the game's Golden Passes for the game's then-upcoming seventh season. The company announced that, among other changes, each season would be split into two parts lasting approximately one month each, with each part having its own Golden Pass, and Tokens—which can be either purchased as microtransactions or earned through ranked multiplayer—can no longer be used to purchase Golden Passes, effectively making Golden Passes only available via a direct purchase.

The monetization changes was met with strong backlash from players. Players criticized the changes as being "predatory" and labeled Gameloft as "thieves". Paul McNally of ReadWrite pointed out that the announcement comes "at a time when the Helldivers 2 Warbond battle pass is being praised for being so generous with its in-game currency allowing players easy access to its premium tiers for free". Players review bombed the game on Steam after the announcement, with Destructoid's Michael Beckwith pointing out that the game's Steam version had been losing active players since November 2023 according to Steam Charts. Some players requested refunds for their past purchases, others threatened to boycott the game by either refusing to make any further purchases or stop playing Speedstorm altogether, and at least one Redditor on the Speedstorm subreddit has proposed filing a class action lawsuit.

On 17 April 2024, in response to the backlash, Gameloft announced that players could continue to purchase Golden Pass Credits with Tokens until 16 May 2024, allowing players to buy future Golden Passes using Credits bought with Tokens up to that date, but otherwise would continue with plans to restrict Golden Pass purchases to either direct payments or Golden Pass Credits afterward.