In these times of economic recession, you may not be able to find the spare change to pick up a slot racing hobby. Building complicated tracks takes up a whole lot of space in your home, a large amount of cash and the patience of a very patient person. Enter SlotZ Racer, which promises all the tyre melting, car wrecking fun for less than a price of a pint. It's published by Freeverse, who are a big Mac games developer and have also written a good number of iPhone hits as well.

One thing that strikes you almost immediately - SlotZ Racer is huge on content. The bulk of the game, Championship mode, has 15 series which have 3 difficulty settings for each collection of races. That's 45 trophies that you can win, which should take up a lot of your time to complete. New cars are added as you progress through the championships, and each behaves differently on the track - so you will have to adjust your racing style accordingly. Almost everything can be tweaked to suit your preferences - such as the track location, day or night mode, grip settings, engine noise - it's all here. But what really makes the game more replayable is the track editor, which has more track pieces than you can shake a stick at. You can build bridges, banks, chicanes, tight loops, humps and more - it's incredibly easy to do so - in an overhead view, the slopes are handled automatically and intuitively, so you don't have to worry about steep gradients or connecting pieces just right, like you would in the real world.

Like in slot racers that I've played, you have one trigger that acts as your acceleration and brake at the same time - Strange Flavour have opted for either a button at the bottom of the screen that you press and depress, or an analog style stick which you can slide up and down. I much preferred the button, if only because it was far easier to get to grips with. There's no other controls, like steering or boost, and so you must leverage the throttle to give you the most speed at all times without crashing off the track. This control scheme works superbly well when you have up to three other friends huddled around your iPhone, each with their own corner of the screen to control. Tracks and cars for multiplayer are unlocked as you beat the championship races - but of course, you can build an ultimate track in the editor and go play that. It's brilliant whichever track you opt for, and the social aspect of four players on one screen makes for much better gameplay than four iPhones on a WiFi network.

Sadly, once you're past the first couple of easy championships, you realise how annoyingly predictable the AI can be. All races start and end the same - you'll be given a head start of a few seconds while the computer warms up, and then each of the three opponents will shift into their own driving style - Slotzbob is easy to lap and will come last all the time, Fruitbat will always be breathing down your neck as the fastest of the drivers, and MC-G will hold the middle ground. The opponents never crash off the track (unless you're really lucky on a chicane), and so you will have to be skilled to place first without crashing, and maintaining a fast lap. It's not that we don't like a challenge, but it's almost impossible for Fruitbat to get any position other than first (except if you beat him to it), and so races feel like you're against that driver rather than the computer as a whole.

Presentation is good, but could be a tad better. The sports hall setting feels vast but at the same time, weirdly foggy. Like a haunted sports hall. Likewise, the club environment doesn't look like a club, it looks like a brick room with a few mirrors - more of something that came out of an old tech demo than a brand new iPhone game. We know these aren't the major focal point of the game, but the spare room setting is pretty darn good. Also, the menu system could stand to be more intuitive - you have to go through 7 taps to initiate a multiplayer race, then do all that over again if you want to pick a different track. It can get irritating. Despite these issues, SlotZ Racer is worth the pickup for the multiplayer component alone, plus the countless hours you'll get out of making your own tracks. But if you're looking for a more realistic set of computer opponents that actually race properly in a single player mode, there's plenty of other racers out there.

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