Games like Screamer for the drift, the fights and the story

Prices, platforms and subscriptions checked on October 24, 2026.

Start with Inertial Drift. It runs on the same control split Screamer uses, left stick to steer and right stick to drift, and it ties for the lowest price in the table below.

Screamer stacks two more systems on top of that handling. ECHO combat lets you spend Sync on Boost or Shield, which charges Entropy for Strikes and Overdrive (Screamer’s official page), and the Tournament story follows five teams through an underground race. No game here carries all of it, so the picks are grouped by the part you miss most.

For scale, HowLongToBeat players finish Screamer’s main story in about 11½ hours on average. If you want the wider field of car games, the guide to car games sorted by what you do with the car covers it.

Five Screamer alternatives side by side

Each game below copies one part of Screamer, and the second column names it.

Prices are US list prices from the store pages for Inertial Drift, Tokyo Xtreme Racer, JDM: Japanese Drift Master and Hot Wheels Unleashed 2 on Steam, and Wipeout Omega Collection on the PlayStation Store. Lengths are player-reported HowLongToBeat averages, not fixed figures.

Inertial Drift shares Screamer’s twin-stick layout

Inertial Drift

The second stick handles the slide. Steam’s listing calls it the “Drift Stick,” a dedicated control for your drift while the left stick steers, and Screamer’s own control notes split steering and drifting across the two sticks in the same way.

It came out in 2020 with 16 cars, each with its own handling to learn.

The story is short. Inertial Drift follows a group of friends racing for the Summer Grand Prix (ESRB rating summary), and HowLongToBeat players clear the main story in about two hours, or about eight and a half with extras. A Twilight Rivals add-on with more content sells separately on Steam.

If the ECHO fights were your favorite part, this pick does nothing for that: its events are races, head-to-heads, time trials and style showdowns. It is rated E. Local play is for two players, and online play on PlayStation needs PS Plus (PlayStation Store listing).

Want races that feel like fights?

Screamer’s Strikes run on Entropy, which you only build by spending Sync first. Two games put that kind of attack-and-defend decision into a race, from opposite directions.

Wipeout Omega Collection

Shooting rivals is part of how you score. Pickups include rockets and plasma beams, and points come from damaging or destroying rival ships (its ESRB entry). That is the nearest thing you can buy today to landing a Strike. The collection packs three earlier Wipeout games, 26 reversible tracks and a career mode.

Before you buy: Wipeout Omega Collection is a PS4 game. The PlayStation Store says it plays on PS5, with a warning that some PS4 features can be absent there, and online races need PS Plus.

There is no story to follow, and you pilot anti-gravity ships with no cars anywhere. It is rated E10+ for Fantasy Violence.

Tokyo Xtreme Racer

More than 450 rivals wait on Tokyo’s expressway, and none of them is beaten by crossing a line first. Each duel is an SP Battle: both drivers start with Spirit Points, and you win by draining the other driver’s (Steam page). Speed alone does not settle it, which makes this the closest any car game here gets to a fighting game’s life bar.

Between fights, rivals show who they are in parking-area scenes. That is thinner storytelling than Screamer’s Tournament, and there is no split-screen: the game is single-player only on PC and PS5.

Recent Steam reviews sit at 77% positive, cooler than the 95% across all English reviews. Players coming from open-world racers will recognize it from the Forza Horizon list, where it is the pick for Japan at night.

For players who stayed for the story

JDM: Japanese Drift Master

Screamer tells its Tournament through cutscenes (ESRB listing for Screamer); JDM tells its campaign through hand-drawn manga pages, across more than 40 story events (Steam page). You play a foreigner trying to make a name in Japan’s drift scene, driving licensed Nissans, Hondas, Subarus and Mazdas you tune yourself.

Pick it for the characters and the setting. Expect a different kind of drifting: an open world, two handling models (Arcade, or Simcade with every assist off), and events such as drift battles and drag races (GOG store page). Nothing in that list resembles Screamer’s combat.

Steam reviews are Mostly Positive at 74%. The ESRB rates it Teen, with the violence shown in its comic panels (ESRB summary). On PS5 it is a one-player game, while the PC version adds online lobbies of up to eight.

A family racer from Screamer’s studio

Hot Wheels Unleashed 2: Turbocharged

Milestone released this three years before Screamer, and it rarely appears next to Screamer in recommendations. For one reader it is the best pick here: the person who wants Screamer’s aggression in a game a younger player can join.

Lateral Dash and single or double jumps let you bump rivals off the track (Steam page), which makes them the family-rated cousin of a Strike. The campaign has its own story, a city under attack by creatures that you save by winning races and challenges. HowLongToBeat players finish it in about nine hours.

Screamer is rated M for Mature (ESRB listing), while Hot Wheels Unleashed 2 is rated E, with In-Game Purchases listed. Two-player split-screen gives the second controller a place, and the car games for kids sorted by ESRB rating cover more options at that age. If your Screamer nights were split-screen with friends, couch co-op racing games by player count goes further.

The downsides: toy cars on orange track, a story aimed at children, and two season passes sold separately. Steam reviews are Mostly Positive at 77%.

Is Need for Speed Unbound close enough?

No. Steam users tag it with both Anime and Combat Racing (Steam page), the same pairing that sits on Screamer’s own page.

The store description is about police chases and weekly qualifiers for a street race; nothing in it resembles a Shield or a Strike. Reviews are Mixed, 63% positive across 21,157 English reviews and 58% over the last 30 days, and the PC version needs the EA app and an EA account. For crashing through traffic, the crash-first picks in games like Burnout Paradise fit better.

Milestone’s newest racer is the other easy mistake. Hot Wheels Infinite Rush, released in September 2026 on PS5, Xbox Series X/S, Switch 2 and PC, moves the toy cars into an open world of islands (Milestone’s announcement). Critics were split: a 74 top-critic average on OpenCritic, with 56% recommending it.

Buy Inertial Drift first

If the drifting is what kept you in Screamer’s Tournament, buy Inertial Drift: the slide sits on its own stick, and it ties for the lowest price in the table. Before you buy, choose the edition, because the base story takes about two hours and the Twilight Rivals content comes as an add-on on Steam or as the Twilight Rivals Edition on PS5. If the fights mattered more than the drift, take Tokyo Xtreme Racer instead, as long as you play on PC or PS5.