Editorial basis

Our curator Conrado Lusa played the Half Grip demo live on our Oct 22, 2026 Steam Next Fest stream. Quotes are translated from Portuguese.

What the game is

Half Grip, from Half Games, is a roguelike combat racing game with one hard rule: you do everything with one arm. According to its Steam page you steer, shoot, change gears and more, "all with one arm", while competing against armed rivals on atmospheric tracks rendered in harsh pixelated detail. Car handling sits between realistic and arcade, and your upgrades decide whether the tires grip the road or slide off it. Money won through skill-based driving and combat pays for upgrades and weapons, including rams, shotguns, magnets and mines. As a roguelike, each run is meant to feel different.

What Conrado did

The first clip starts on a dark track at night. The game asks the player to push a shell into the gun and work the pump to chamber it, all with the same hand that was just on the wheel. Conrado reacted first with surprise: "Wow, that took me by surprise." Then he gave his read on the start: "We clearly have a pretty big learning curve, because, man, I've never seen a game do this." He added that it would take a while to get good.

A few minutes later he was on a snowy track in a first-person cockpit view, calling gear changes out loud ("Pull the third") and braking for a sharp corner: "Brake, brake, this one is hard." He noted that dropping into the snow loses you the race. After the finish he said he was impressed by how quickly he picked up the controls. His summary: "I thought it was going to be just a regular little racing game, but... it blew my mind, man."

What we saw on screen

  • A dark night track with a gun held in the on-screen hand and a "Push a shell into the gun" prompt.
  • A snowy forest track with a manual gear lever in the cockpit, a lap counter and a live position board.
  • The final frame shows a "Finished" result after the third lap.

Release status

Per Steam, a free demo has been available since Oct 19, 2026, and the full game has no release date yet ("To be announced"). The developer's own press materials mention Early Access later this year; we have not confirmed that on Steam, so we do not repeat it as fact. We could not find an official X account for the studio.

Why it works for a demo

Half Grip makes its gimmick the whole game. One hand means every action competes with every other action, and the demo teaches that in the first minutes. For Conrado it came with a learning curve, and with a verdict that the game was far more than a regular racer.

Sources and quote references

  • Steam page.
  • Free demo.
  • Conrado x Venn stream, October 22, 2026. Quotes translated from Portuguese.

Where to find more

More indie picks from the Venn team are on our Steam curator page.