JDM: Japanese Drift Master launches in March

Gaming Factory has announced that JDM: Japanese Drift Master, the game about drift racing in Japan, is set to release on March 26, 2025 on PC.

You’d think there wouldn’t be much more to say beyond that, but JDM: Japanese Drift Master isn’t just some knock-off of Need for Speed: Underground. It uses its open world to tell a story told through manga-like cutscenes. According to the store page, you will “Step into the shoes of a foreigner determined to make his mark on the Japanese drifting scene.”

I played the prologue demo, and, from what I can tell, it wasn’t really about that. You played as some jerk rich kid who was going around and being a privileged jerk. Being a prologue, that kind of makes sense if it was setting up the antagonist. I also didn’t complete the demo, so maybe the story had some sense of redemption to it.

Part of the reason I didn’t complete the demo is it’s just not my kind of game. I love drift racing in a Mario Kart or Parking Garage Rally Circuit sort of way. That is to say: very unrealistic. JDM: Japanese Drift Master calls itself “simcade.” Specifically, it says, “with a solid simulation backbone and arcade layers added on top for a fun and enjoyable experience.” 

As it turns out, the arcade layer isn’t enough for it to keep me engaged. The cars feel heavy, like how I would imagine cars do. You can’t drift over the horizon. Yet, worst of all, the cars (at least in the demo) are completely impervious to damage. Listen, I can’t overstate how much San Francisco Rush ruined my expectations for racing games. If it’s not over-the-top wacky, I’m expecting some big, metal-twisting crashes.

That is to say, it’s just not the game for me. I appreciate what it’s doing, and I imagine that drift racing enthusiasts who prefer things to have the whiff of realism. It’s also built in Unreal Engine 5, so it has a lot of technical bells and whistles. It still felt like a smaller production in the prologue, but the new press materials suggest it’s received a lot of upgrades. Even still, it touts 250km in main roads and official licensing for the cars, includings Mazda, Nissan, and Subaru. So, there’s a lot there for enthusiasts.

JDM: Japanese Drift Master launches on PC on March 26, 2025.