It’s hard to believe that it’s been five whole years since Aquiris Game Studio launched Horizon Chase, a retro-inspired racing game that literally started its life under the tentative title of Project Retro-Racer. Horizon Chase blew our dang minds when it first arrived, with its decidedly retro-inspired roots but its modern sensibilities that made it feel like the kind of game that someone in 1985 would have envisioned existing in the year 2015. We gave Horizon Chase 5 stars in our review and chose it for our Game of the Week when it released, and it has remained one of our very favorite arcade racers in the years since.
Apparently we aren’t alone in feeling that way, as this week marks the 5th anniversary of Horizon Chase and along with it comes the news that the game has been downloaded a whopping 50 million times since its release. Dats allota downloads! To celebrate these major milestones, there’s a special Weekly Challenge running in Horizon Chase where if you complete all of the event’s challenges you’ll be able to unlock this frickin sweet all black version of the game’s Cruiser race car. Check it out in this new trailer.
Long-time players of Horizon Chase will likely remember the two major content updates released following its launch. First was the Australia Cup update on its 1st anniversary, and then there was the Hawaii Cup update in the spring of 2018. It was about that time that Aquiris focused on the console and PC version of the game, called Horizon Chase Turbo, and spent the next couple of years updating and maintaining that version. The mobile version of Horizon Chase sat idle during this time until this past April when Aquiris released an update for it that revamped the game’s entire UI and rejiggered the free-to-try-with-premium-unlock pay model essentially making it even more generous to free players.
In May a new update brought a new city to the Brazil cup that was based on the developer’s hometown of Porto Alegre, and that update also enabled the new Weekly Challenges which brought a unique set of tracks and unlockable rewards to the game each week. Impressively, the Weekly Challenges are available to both free players and those who purchase the full premium unlock, though premium players do earn more rewards than free players do.
The black anniversary skin can be yours by completing the current Weekly Challenge, or perhaps it should be the “Weekly" Challenge since they extended last week’s by a couple of days and this current one runs nearly two weeks starting from today August 20th until September 1st. Complete all challenges by September 1st and the black car skin is yours, and again that goes for both free and paid players.
Finally, from today until August 27th, the premium unlock IAP in Horizon Chase – World Tour is discounted by 60% on both iOS and Android. Compared to the 30 tracks and 7 cars you get access to as a free player, the premium unlock offers up a whopping 95 tracks in 41 cities, a set of 10 Cups, more than 20 unlockable cars, and the previously mentioned additional Weekly Challenge goodies. It is WELL worth the price and then some, but if you still aren’t sure there’s no reason not to at least take the free portion of Horizon Chase for a spin and then jump on the sale price if you decide you dig it.
