There’s no shortage of car racing video games these days. From open-world hooning in Forza Horizon to the hyper-realistic iRacing community, car-based video games are, technically speaking, better than ever. But a new rally game aims to bring some whimsy back into the mix.
Officially known as Left! Left! Left!, the two-player asymmetrical co-op rally game is set for a public test next Friday, October 23, on Steam from developer Stellux Interactive. In the game, one player drives a sloppy hatchback with almost no idea of where the road is going, while the other navigates from a physical tablet. There aren’t adjustable driving settings or upgradable cars, and the game isn’t chock-full of fancy graphics, either. Instead, this game showcases the chaos inside a rally car.
“I’ve always loved making games and creating experiences for people. Co-op games have gotten huge lately, so I wanted to try building one myself. I’m also a big motorsport fan—Formula 1, rally, MotoGP—just as a hobby, not as a career,” Patrik Plaňanský of Stellux Interactive said to Road & Track. “Putting those two things together felt natural: a co-op game built around racing. I’d never really seen a rally game that was ‘truly’ co-op, so I wanted to mix rally with a funny co-op experience.”
The relationship between driver and co-driver in real life is full of camaraderie and tension alike, and Plaňanský wanted to capture that feeling in the game. As a result, the driver cannot see the navigation tablet in detail, and the co-driver’s view is pitched down. The co-driver’s tablet navigation is affected by physics, meaning the player must grab it and hold on. If the driver needs the windscreen cleaned, the co-driver must drop the tablet, leaving both players navigationally blind.
“I made it asymmetrical because I wanted the whole game to revolve around communication between the driver and the navigator. That back-and-forth already creates funny moments, and it’s a big reason people play co-op with friends: they want to laugh and spend time together. The imbalance also punishes bad communication hard, which makes those moments even better,” Plaňanský said.
Left! Left! Left! is far from a simulator-style video game. The driving feel is described as a “readable wreck,” and the hatchback is meant to be slippery and messy. The goal was to have it be controllable on a keyboard, but make it drive like a tired, old car on a bad road. Plus, there are cabin-chaos elements: depending on the surface, mud can fly onto the windshield, and the door can fly open mid-corner.
“Mud is map-reactive, not a timer. There are mud deposits around the map, and that’s where the asymmetrical design really shines—the wipers are controlled by the navigator. They have to drop what they’re doing, grab a dash control, and hold it while the wipers clear the glass. If they let go, it pauses. So it’s a real task, and for that time they can’t read the map,” Plaňanský said. “Because it’s physical, it doesn’t stay where they left it. One hard turn, and they might be hunting for it around the car. Recovering it is just grabbing it again when they find it—sometimes a second, sometimes longer if it’s wedged somewhere stupid.”
Plaňanský said the video game has gone completely viral on Instagram after a teaser was posted last week. Left! Left! Left! has amassed 170,000 wishlists on Steam in just 6 days. Stellux Interactive will host a 72-hour public Playtest on Friday, October 23, which players can join the queue for directly on their Steam page.
A New York transplant hailing from the Pacific Northwest, Emmet White has a passion for anything that goes: cars, bicycles, planes, and motorcycles. After learning to ride at 17, Emmet worked in the motorcycle industry before joining Autoweek in 2022 and Road & Track in 2024. The woes of alternate side parking have kept his fleet moderate, with a 2014 Volkswagen Jetta GLI and a BMW 318i E30 street parked in his Queens community.
