Screamer is a 2026 arcade racing video game developed by Milestone S.r.l., an Italian subsidy of Plaion (formerly Koch Media), which itself is a subsidy of Embracer, although you might know them better under their former name THQ Nordic AB. Screamer is a twin stick powered up arcade car racing game that caught my attention during the 2024 Game Awards. They showed this trailer in which a car appeared that had glowing neon text on it in a Neo/Neon-Noir world setting. That car, with the neon sign on it? Yes, I love flashy lights and stylistic signs like these, so I put it on my wishlist and kinda didn't think much longer about it.

Now at the time I didn't know what “Strike Force Romanda” was, but it sounded pretty cool so I didn't mind. Sometime through 2025 I saw that the developers made a series of videos about Screamer and what the game was about. Since it's a racing game I was primarily interested in the game's mechanics, hoping that there was going to be something that would make Screamer stand out in the racing genre, which had become rather stagnant during the last decade or so. Don't get me wrong, racing games are still played plentifully - between iRacing, Automobilista 2, Assetto Corsa, BeamNG Drive, F1, Mario Kart or even the occasional Need For Speed, there is no shortage of players playing racers (90% of which are probably frothing out of their mouth right now because I didn't mention their particular racing game). Despite the persistent enthusiasm for racing games, however, there hasn't been a lot of innovation in trying to create new, different ways to race, especially in the arcade racing field of video games.

So I watched the developer's video on the game's mechanics and, admittedly, it didn't make me a lot more knowledgeable of the game. The things they said were interesting, but I didn't really… understand? them from the video. But either way, what I saw in the video still gave me the impression that I was looking at a game that was at least decent and had the potential to be great. The visuals are on point, the cars are still what I remembered from the Game Awards trailer, the racing looked exciting; I didn't understand the mechanics but really that meant that this was potentially going to be more than “just another arcade racer”. What I saw was intriguing - put it that way.

Gameplay