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Play this: 'Pyongyang Racer' is the first game developed in North Korea for Western audiences

Play this: 'Pyongyang Racer' is the first game developed in North Korea for Western audiences

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Pyongyang Racer
Pyongyang Racer

Let's just lay it out there: Pyongyang Racer isn't going to take home any Game of the Year awards. But it does mark one notable achievement: the racer is reported to be the first game developed inside North Korea that's targeted at gamers outside the communist state. And that's really about the only praise we can level on the title, created by Nosotek as a marketing tool for Koryo — a travel company that specializes in arranging North Korea visits.

The "goal" of Pyongyang Racer is to explore the country's capital city while collecting fuel barrels to keep your car moving. Other than popular destinations in the city — which are surprisingly well-modeled compared to the rest of the game — there's not a whole lot to see. You're tasked to avoid other traffic, which shouldn't prove difficult since other cars on the road don't actually move. The entire experience looks like it was pulled straight out of the 32-bit console era, yet we still stuck with it through an entire race. To be fair, Koryo has no false iillusions about where its promotional game ranks in the gaming hierarchy, saying Pyongyang was "not intended to be a high-end techological wonder hit game of the 21st century." Just a note for those of you with a competitive streak: if you're looking to see how you fared against other drivers, you'll need to manually take a screenshot of your completion time and email it to the travel firm.