Shardana is a racing ttrpg inspired by Wave Race 64 and F-Zero.
The PDF is 38 pages, with clean, readable layout and a lot of illustrations and graphics that feel appropriate to the setting.
Similar to its predecessor, Volga, Shardana is tightly focused on translating a particular video game feeling to tabletop.
It also comes with a richly detailed world, this time orbiting around hydrofoil racing. There's plenty of flavorful writing, primarily narrated by in-universe characters, and it all builds a setting that feels fun to visit.
Mechanically, Shardana puts a *lot* of effort into making racing work in an rpg. Racing has always been a hard adaptation to the medium---what's fun about it is the feeling of velocity and the string of split-second decisions that make it up, and these are hard to convert---but Shardana goes a wargamey route that still feels tense and competitive.
Racers in Shardana string together multiple movement actions on their turns, shifting between gears as they do. Higher gears provide more distance but interfere with turning, and staying in high gear can flame out your engine. You can also only (usually) change gears once per movement, so during the course of a turn you'll likely shift gears at least twice, and there's a feeling of constantly fiddling with your craft's performance to push it to its limits.
Crashing into other players is also a whole mechanic, and hydrofoils you crash into can crash into other hydrofoils in turn, encouraging you to sometimes go for bowling strikes. But starting a crash also ends your turn, and crashes are more powerful when you have a lot of movement remaining, so attacking at full power means limiting your ability to gain distance. It's a balanced tradeoff.
Speed and aggression are both valid playstyles, but so is defense. Courses have jumps and buoys and other features that risk damaging crafts that traverse them, and more defensive hydrofoils can use these features more freely. They can also navigate through clusters of other racers with less fear of being bodied by a couple chain collisions.
Characters can still be KO'd, and KO'd characters remain a hazard on the course for a little while afterward, but otherwise crafts on low HP heal on their own after a period of reduced performance. It's possible to get damaged badly, recover, and still win a race.
The game *is* wholly confined to the events of its races, and I feel like some mechanics for doing stuff outside of the cockpit would do a lot to strengthen the system and further bring out the setting's flavor, but within the bounds of those races it's extremely tightly designed, easy to run, and a fun experience that clings to the inside line between rpg, board game, and wargame.
Overall, if you like racing in rpgs, or if you're simply nostalgic for N64 boat racers, you should absolutely give this a look. It's extremely well made, handles larger numbers of players well, and is great for an evening of competitive gaming.
Minor Issues:
-Page 18, Equipment, "enhancedcarries" should have a space in it