Art of Rally Indie Racing Game Gets New Trailer

Funselektor Labs has released a new trailer for its racing title Art of Rally. The rally car game, which features a distinctly stylized minimalist art style, is set to arrive on all things Xbox this coming summer.

The Art of Rally trailer comes as part of Microsoft's March Xbox indie event, which saw Xbox team up with Twitch Gaming to present a showcase of over 100 games. The presentation saw the reveal of numerous trailers, including Hello Neighbor 2, Fall Guys developer Devolver Digital's new title Death's Door, and much more.

The trailer jumps straight into the rally action, with a close-up shot of a car pulling out of a drift. Set to Vyacheslav Koristov's "Challenge," the video showcases Art of Rally's colorful and varied environments and smooth physics. The game features 60 different tracks from locales around the world, such as Norway, Japan, and Germany. Interspersed with the variety of shots are a multitude of glowing reviews from not only gaming outlets, but actual motoring publications as well. For example, Top Gear, the long-running (and very respected) magazine and TV series said, "Art of Rally is essentially meditation for petrolheads," which is quite the seal of approval.

The indie title also features over 50 vintage cars, ranging from the '60s to the '80s, with Group B, Group S and Group A classes. Art of Rally takes a decidedly different approach than its rally competitors like Dirt 5 or WRC 9, which just released on Switch a few weeks ago. Rather than aiming for near-photorealism like the aforementioned titles, Art of Rally appears to be a title that strips down the genre to more overtly depict what rally enthusiast truly believe rallying to be - an artform.

Advertising within the gameplay of video games has become more prevalent as developers team up with companies specializing in advertising technology. While some advertising in video games can is met with significant backlash like the unskippable ads within NBA 2K21, other advertising can be harmless like Adidas billboards in FIFA soccer games, or may even add to gameplay like Death Stranding's partnership with Monster that adds the energy drink into the game, or Fortnite's partnership with Marvel introducing Thanos to the battle royale to promote Avengers: Infinity War.

The latest company to add billboards within a title is Codemasters. Recently acquired by EA just this year, Codemasters is behind many racing titles such as Dirt, F1, and TOCA. Now, Codemasters has teamed up with Bidstack, a company specializing in geo-targeting advertising within video games. The partnership has resulted in new ads in the Codemasters titles Dirt 5, Dirt Rally 2.0, and GRID for a select few players. Because of Bidstack's specialization in geo-targeting, only players in the UK will see the new ads within the game.

The new advertising billboards are not for a product, but advice from the UK government. The ads have two different messages, which are "Stay Home, Protect the NHS, Save Lives", and "Every Mind Matters." The first ad is intended to pass stay-at-home advice from the UK National Health Service during the pandemic, while the "Every Mind Matters" ad will address mental health and provide resources with the Mind Plan initiative, an online service designed to improve mental health and well-being.