SuperTuxKart developers have announced the first release candidate of SuperTuxKart 1.5, the next major version of the popular, cross-platform, and open-source racing game.

This release candidate build arrives almost 6 months after last October’s big beta release which added, amongst other things, a benchmark feature, kart/track hiding, a new Display section, smooth scrolling, max frame-rate controls, and more.

Given the gap, many long-time fans of this kart racer had expected a stable release to make it over the finish line by now, so what’s the holdup?

No-one need panic about this game’s developers slipping on banana peels or being thwacked by bowling balls out in the wild.

SuperTuxKart say there were “more changes than we initially anticipated”, and with developers juggling real life with contributions, and the desire to make the last planned entry in the 1.x series a podium winner, delay crept in.

I won’t recap all of the changes since the SuperTuxKart 1.4 release, so refer to the changelog for blow-by-blow details if you want them.

But here’s an overview of changes between the 1.5 beta and the release candidate:

  • Better display of karts, tracks & game modes reducing the need to scroll
  • Big updates to Vulkan renderer (OpenGL remains default)
  • Improved parachute and bubblegum shield animations
  • Overworld graphical ‘enhancements’
  • New egg hunts: Black Forest, Gran Paradisio Island & The Old Mine tracks
  • SSAA and Percentage-Closer Soft Shadows for users with beefy GPUs

Interested in taking the SuperTuxKart 1.5 Release Candidate for a spin?

Binaries for Linux, Windows, Mac and Android can be downloaded from the SuperTuxKart GitHub release page (toggle the ‘assets’ label to see all available files)

On Linux, download the TAR.GZ that matches your system architecture (32-bit, 64-bit or Arm64), then extract the archive, enter the resulting folder, and double-click on the file inside to run it.

Don’t forget to report bugs you find so they can be fixed (although the bug report I filed about me always coming last has yet to be resolved).