If you’re undecided on whether to pick up Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown when it finally arrives on September 12, it’s now available as a limited, free demo on Steam for the next ten days.
The demo is available as part of Steam Next Fest, a week-long look at upcoming games on the PC platform, which includes demos and live streams with developers for scores of titles — Solar Crown among them.
Naturally, as a demo, there’s a limit on what’s available for players to experience but it should be a largely representative look at the early stages of the game — without any limitations on the amount of gameplay time aside from the June 17 end date.
That will include the first 15 levels of gameplay progression, with the clan headquarters of both the Sharps and the Streets groups accessible and 10 levels of progress at each. Additionally nine of the 14 districts of the Hong Kong Island setting of the game are available — and you’ll be returned to a previous location if you try to drive into one of the locked areas.
In total you’ll be able to sample almost 30 of the game’s races and activities, as well as drive nearly 30 of the game’s 100-or-so cars. That will, naturally, include the three starting “Daily Driver” class cars of the Alpine A110, Ford Mustang GT, and Nissan 370Z.
You can buy up to 13 other cars, including the Porsche Cayenne Turbo and rather incongruous Citroen 2CV, with a further 11 available for short test drives only. That includes the two available hypercars of the Porsche 918 Spyder and Koenigsegg Agera RS.
While the demo is free to download and play, you should be aware that there are some pretty beefy PC requirements to run it.
Even the minimum specification, running 720p30, requires an i7-6700K/Ryzen 7 1800X with a GTX1060/RX480 graphics card. Recommended specs bump that to an i7-10700K/Ryzen 7 5800X with an RTX2080/RX6700 and that still only gets you 1080p60. Little wonder that the eighth-gen consoles were abandoned!
Of course the demo not only serves to give players a preview of the title, but acts as a server stability test to allow KT Racing to gauge loads, as well as gathering player feedback.
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