JDM: Japanese Drift Master review

You’ve got to be skidding

Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun / Gaming Factory

A tough but strong contender in a growing niche of racing games focused on skidding round corners - but this time with some light sushi delivery.

• Developer: Gaming Factory
• Publisher: Gaming Factory, 4Divinity
• Release: May 21st, 2025
• On: Windows
• From: Steam , Epic Games
• Price: £29/$35/€35
• Reviewed on: Intel Core-i7-11700F, 16GB RAM, Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060, Windows 10

I have spun out on wet tarmac again and I am furious with myself. JDM: Japanese Drift Master requires a different mentality to most other racing games. Drifting around a corner is not the side gimmick that you’ll do a few times during races. Drifting is the race. In this self-described “simcade” game, you’ve got to slide around the bendy roads of sunny (and rainy) Japan while delivering sushi and chasing boy racers for style points. It all adds up to some remarkably weighty speedfreakery that is bitingly frustrating when I’m bad at it, and rumblingly compelling when I’m good at it.

First, let’s get some housekeeping out of the way. JDM stands for “Japanese Domestic Market” referring to vehicles built and sold in Japan, but the same acronym has also come to be used as a shorthand for cars made in Japan and sold overseas. Search “JDM” on used car websites and you’ll likely spot some handsomely boxy beasts . Of course, this means that the full title of the racing game in question is technically: “Japanese Domestic Market: Japanese Drift Master”. This is stupid. But then, a few things about the game are.

The story, for one, is a dopey fish-out-of-water tale about a European fella called Tomasz, who has revved his way to Japan and begins to compete in the local drifting scene. It’s delivered via the flippable pages of a manga, to be read in traditional right-to-left format. It’s a clumsy story, shoe-hornedly delivered in the exact way racing game stories often are. Imagine reading a black-and-white comic version of Fast And Furious: Tokyo Drift but without the Marshall Mathers lookalike . The women boob along boobily and the rival hits his girlfriend, just so you know he’s a bad’un.

You can turn on a “assistance mode” for reading the manga, which labels what panel to read next. |Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun / Gaming Factory

But put down these pages and you’re faced with an ambitious little driveabout. There’s an open world map that slowly fills with events and challenges as you dither through the story. Some are straightforward “grip” races, in which drifting isn’t actually a big part. Others want you to hold a drift for as long as possible to accrue thousands of points for a bronze, silver, or gold ranking. Other missions include delivering sushi “in style” which means flying down the rural roads of a fictional Japanese prefecture while not crashing and wrecking all the perfectly arranged nigiri. There are drag races, where you’ll warm up your tires beforehand by spinning them, and roadside speed cameras that snap your highest speed - setting a record while getting a record.

So there’s variety, but the most eye-catching are races in which you’ve got to beat other computer-controlled opponents while at the same time gathering an admirable amount of style points by drifting. You need to finish first and take every corner like angry Bowser in Mario Kart. Drifting is so core to the game, that you are basically forced to do it at every single corner. As an arcade racer rube, this can cause some initial hand-to-eye reluctance. My thumbs want to just brake and slow for a bend, but do that and you’ll find the cars here steer at low speeds with agonising stiffness. The game is not for turning. You learn to drift, or you lose.

There are hardcore modes for players with a wheel, gearbox, and clutch accessories. But also an arcade mode for simpler knuckleheads like me. |Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun / Gaming Factory

The game tries to help you out. There’s an on-screen diagram that appears on your HUD while drifting, to show the balance of your car. A needle swings left or right into a green zone to show the perfect drifting position. If it veers into the red zone you’ll spin out. Wet weather makes this more likely, and in the rain your car can feel completely different. I struggled a lot while trying to perfect my turns and obey the whims of the guiding needle. I drifted into barriers. I ruined stacks of maki rolls. I suffered flashbacks of trying to clear the training car park in Driver for PS1 .

But I eventually learned when to ignore the on-screen guide. It feels easier to attune yourself to drifting when you simply look at your car’s movements directly and learn to intuit the pressure of your thumbs. UI can do a lot, but sometimes it can’t beat balls-basic hand-to-eye intuition.

Spinning out loses your multiplier completely, making rainy weather feel like an actual threat. |Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun / Gaming Factory

Once you start to get a feel for how the game really wants you to drive, the tire-smoking flow can be mildly intoxicating. Nailing bend after bend the whole way across the map to the next objective is satisfying in the same way as managing to go a whole race in Burnout without once hitting a wall and turning your hatchback into minced metal. On the other hand, messing up a turn towards the end of a race can be a hellish frustration. And that’s mostly down to the game’s unforgiving approach to rewarding points.

Getting a good score relies on you maintaining a drift for as long as possible - in this way, you build a big multiplier. The game’s tutorials do not make a big deal of this fact, but it is a huge reason you will fail any given challenge. It’s at the core of the game. Spinning out cuts your multiplier off completely, and ending too early loses out on big points. So you’ve got to stretch those drifts to breaking point, then level out sensibly once you’re satisfied. If you can’t manage that, gathering the requisite points to beat opponents is an uphill battle. It’s kinda the same principle as landing “perfect” after a huge combo in OlliOlli games. You only get a fraction of the points if you don’t nail that final moment. But unlike those skating games, restarts in JDM are not frictionless and quick. Restarting an event when you’ve messed up includes a loading screen by necessity, and that makes resentment curdle when you’re trying to perform a perfect run.

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<img loading=“lazy” src=“https://assetsio.gnwcdn.com/jdm-japanese-drift-master-review-8.jpg?width=2048&height=2048&fit=bounds&quality=85&format=jpg&auto=webp" onerror=“this.onerror=null;this.src=‘https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhe7F7TRXHtjiKvHb5vS7DmnxvpHiDyoYyYvm1nHB3Qp2_w3BnM6A2eq4v7FYxCC9bfZt3a9vIMtAYEKUiaDQbHMg-ViyGmRIj39MLp0bGFfgfYw1Dc9q_H-T0wiTm3l0Uq42dETrN9eC8aGJ9_IORZsxST1AcLR7np1koOfcc7tnHa4S8Mwz_xD9d0=s16000';" alt=“A salesman sells the player the game’s starter car - a white “Alpha”. - 8”>

Oh, the cars. Damn, that’s what a bunch of you probably care about. Yes, there are a neat range of fully licensed Japanese cars from the past few decades, including a 1988 Honda Civic, a Nissan Skyline from 1971, and an early 2000s Subaru Impreza. Basically any car you could feasibly see Paul Walker looking focused in. The devs have also promised new cars with every update, the first of which is planned for three months from now.

The parts shop too lets you fiddle with a surprising amount of motorbits. Lower the suspension, upgrade the brake pads, swap out the gearbox for a gearbox with a cooler name and an accompanying stats boost. Loads of stuff. There’s also a tuning screen where you can get disgustingly precise with tire pressure, wheel alignment, and adjustable gearbox ratios. Don’t look at me, I don’t know what any of the accompanying numbers mean. They probably make you go zoom-zoom.

The manga pages used to explain suspension geometry are not what I’d call elucidating |Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun / Gaming Factory

Cosmetically, you can make your car look as hideously Fast and/or Furious as you like, with bumpers, spoilers, wheel rims, and wing mirrors. The paint shop lets you attach strobing multicoloured lights to the underside of your ride (what is a car if not a kind of RGB-decorated PC case?) And you can alter the interior with new steering wheels, gear sticks, and seats. A lot of these parts are locked behind getting a better “reputation level”, which basically means completing chapters and side quests to boost XP. I didn’t reach the end of what was available in my playtime, and there’s more coming in future updates.

There are some potholes, sure. That story is borderline insufferable, tutorials don’t do a great job of explaining things, and there’s some bugginess. I only got a fraction of the cash I was supposed to earn from some missions, for example, which made it difficult to progress up that ladder of nice vehicles. But even so, I’m left with the impression of a racing game punching far above its weight and landing an impressive number of blows. If I knew more about drifting as a motorhobby, I might say something big and powerful like “this is the definitive game of a racing subculture!” But I’ll let some other bumpernerd put that label on it. I wouldn’t want to upset all the fans of Night-Runners or Togue Shakai . Regardless of where it fits in its racing niche, JDM may not yet be fully tuned, but it has rolled out of the garage in fine form.

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JDM: Japanese Drift Master

PS5 , Xbox Series X/S , PC

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All 75 Arc Raiders Blueprints and where to get them

These areas have the highest chance of giving you Blueprints

Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Embark Studios

Looking for more Arc Raiders Blueprints? It’s a special day when you find a Blueprint, as they’re among the most valuable items in Arc Raiders. If you find a Blueprint that you haven’t already found, then you must make sure you hold onto it at all costs, because Blueprints are the key to one of the most important and powerful systems of meta-progression in the game.

This guide aims to be the very best guide on Blueprints you can find, starting with a primer on what exactly they are and how they work in Arc Raiders, before delving into exactly where to get Blueprints and the very best farming spots for you to take in your search.

We’ll also go over how to get Blueprints from other unlikely activities, such as destroying Surveyors and completing specific quests. And you’ll also find the full list of all 75 Blueprints in Arc Raiders on this page (including the newest Blueprints added with the Cold Snap update , such as the Deadline Blueprint and Firework Box Blueprint), giving you all the information you need to expand your own crafting repertoire.

In this guide:

• What are Blueprints in Arc Raiders?
• Full Blueprint list: All crafting recipes
• Where to find Blueprints in Arc Raiders Blueprints obtained from quests Blueprints obtained from Trials Best Blueprint farming locations

What are Blueprints in Arc Raiders?

Blueprints in Arc Raiders are special items which, if you manage to extract with them, you can expend to permanently unlock a new crafting recipe in your Workshop. If you manage to extract from a raid with an Anvil Blueprint, for example, you can unlock the ability to craft your very own Anvil Pistol, as many times as you like (as long as you have the crafting materials).

To use a Blueprint, simply open your Inventory while in the lobby, then right-click on the Blueprint and click “Learn And Consume” . This will permanently unlock the recipe for that item in your Workshop. As of the Stella Montis update, there are allegedly 75 different Blueprints to unlock - although only 68 are confirmed to be in the game so far. You can see all the Blueprints you’ve found and unlocked by going to the Workshop menu, and hitting “R” to bring up the Blueprint screen.

It’s possible to find duplicates of past Blueprints you’ve already unlocked. If you find these, then you can either sell them, or - if you like to play with friends - you can take it into a match and gift it to your friend so they can unlock that recipe for themselves. Another option is to keep hold of them until the time comes to donate them to the Expedition.

Full Blueprint list: All crafting recipes

Below is the full list of all the Blueprints that are currently available to find in Arc Raiders, and the crafting recipe required for each item:

Note: The missing Blueprints in this list likely have not actually been added to the game at the time of writing, because none of the playerbase has managed to find any of them. As they are added to the game, I will update this page with the most relevant information so you know exactly how to get all 75 Arc Raiders Blueprints.

Where to find Blueprints in Arc Raiders

Below is a list of all containers, modifiers, and events which maximise your chances of finding Blueprints:

• Certain quests reward you with specific Blueprints .
• Completing Trials has a high chance of offering Blueprints as rewards.
• Surveyors have a decent chance of dropping Blueprints on death.
• High loot value areas tend to have a greater chance of spawning Blueprints.
• Night Raids and Storms may increase rare Blueprint spawn chances in containers.
• Containers with higher numbers of items may have a higher tendency to spawn Blueprints. As a result, Blue Gate (which has many “large” containers containing multiple items) may give you a higher chance of spawning Blueprints.
• Raider containers (Raider Caches, Weapon Boxes, Medical Bags, Grenade Tubes) have increased Blueprint drop rates. As a result, the Uncovered Caches event gives you a high chance of finding Blueprints.
• Security Lockers have a higher than average chance of containing Blueprints.
• Certain Blueprints only seem to spawn under specific circumstances: Tempest Blueprint only spawns during Night Raid events. Vulcano Blueprint only spawns during Hidden Bunker events. Jupiter and Equaliser Blueprints only spawn during Harvester events.

Raider Caches, Weapon Boxes, and other raider-oriented container types have a good chance of offering Blueprints. |Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Embark Studios

Blueprints have a very low chance of spawning in any container in Arc Raiders, around 1-2% on average. However, there is a higher chance of finding Blueprints in particular container types. Specifically, you can find more Blueprints in Raider containers and security lockers.

Beyond this, if you’re looking for Blueprints you should focus on regions of the map which are marked as having particularly high-value loot. Areas such as the Control Tower in Dam Battlegrounds, the Arrival and Departure Buildings in Spaceport, and Pilgrim’s Peak in Blue Gate all have a better-than-average chance of spawning Blueprints somewhere amongst all their containers. Night Raids and Electromagnetic Storm events also increase the drop chances of certain Blueprints .

In addition to these containers, you can often loot Blueprints from destroyed Surveyors - the largest of the rolling ball ARC. Surveyors are more commonly found on the later maps - Spaceport and Blue Gate - and if one spawns in your match, you’ll likely see it by the blue laser beam that it casts into the sky while “surveying”.

Surveyors are quite well-armoured and will very speedily run away from you once it notices you, but if you can take one down then make sure you loot all its parts for a chance of obtaining certain unusual Blueprints.

Blueprints obtained from quests

One way in which you can get Blueprints is by completing certain quests for the vendors in Speranza. Some quests will reward you with a specific item Blueprint upon completion, so as long as you work through all the quests in Arc Raiders, you are guaranteed those Blueprints.

Here is the full list of all Blueprints you can get from quest rewards:

• Trigger Nade Blueprint: Rewarded after completing “Sparks Fly”.
• Lure Grenade Blueprint: Rewarded after completing “Greasing Her Palms”.
• Burletta Blueprint: Rewarded after completing “Industrial Espionage”.
• Hullcracker Blueprint (and Launcher Ammo Blueprint): Rewarded after completing “The Major’s Footlocker”.

Alas, that’s only 4 Blueprints out of a total of 75 to unlock, so for the vast majority you will need to find them yourself during a raid. If you’re intent on farming Blueprints, then it’s best to equip yourself with cheap gear in case you lose it, but don’t use a free loadout because then you won’t get a safe pocket to stash any new Blueprint you find. No pain in Arc Raiders is sharper than failing to extract with a new Blueprint you’ve been after for a dozen hours already.

One of the best ways to get Blueprints is by hitting three stars on all five Trials every week. |Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Embark Studios

Blueprints obtained from Trials

One of the very best ways to get Blueprints is as rewards for completing Trials in Arc Raiders. Trials are unlocked from Level 15 onwards, and allow you to earn rewards by focusing on certain tasks over the course of several raids. For example, one Trial might task you with dealing damage to Hornets, while another might challenge you to loot Supply Drops.

Trials refresh on a weekly basis, with a new week bringing five new Trials. Each Trial can offer up to three rewards after passing certain score milestones, and it’s possible to receive very high level loot from these reward crates - including Blueprints. So if you want to unlock as many Blueprints as possible, you should make a point of completing as many Trials as possible each week.

Best Blueprint farming locations

The very best way to get Blueprints is to frequent specific areas of the maps which combine high-tier loot pools with the right types of containers to search. Here are my recommendations for where to find Blueprints on every map, so you can always keep the search going for new crafting recipes to unlock.

Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Embark Studios

Dam Battlegrounds

The best places to farm Blueprints on Dam Battlegrounds are the Control Tower, Power Generation Complex, Ruby Residence, and Pale Apartments . The first two regions, despite only being marked on the map as mid-tier loot, contain a phenomenal number of containers to loot. The Control Tower can also contain a couple of high-tier Security Lockers - though of course, you’ll need to have unlocked the Security Breach skill at the end of the Survival tree.

There’s also a lot of reporting amongst the playerbase that the Residential areas in the top-left of the map - Pale Apartments and Ruby Residence - give you a comparatively strong chance of finding Blueprints. Considering their size, there’s a high density of containers to loot in both locations, and they also have the benefit of being fairly out of the way. So you’re more likely to have all the containers to yourself.

Buried City

The best Blueprint farming locations on Buried City are the Santa Maria Houses, Grandioso Apartments, Town Hall, and the various buildings of the New District . Grandioso Apartments has a lower number of containers than the rest, but a high chance of spawning weapon cases - which have good Blueprint drop rates. The others are high-tier loot areas, with plenty of lootable containers - including Security Lockers.

Spaceport

The best places to find Blueprints on Spaceport are the Arrival and Departure Buildings, as well as Control Tower A6 and the Launch Towers . All these areas are labelled as high-value loot regions, and many of them are also very handily connected to one another by the Spaceport wall, which you can use to quickly run from one area to the next. At the tops of most of these buildings you’ll find at least one Security Locker, so this is an excellent farming route for players looking to find Blueprints.

The downside to looting Blueprints on Spaceport is that all these areas are hotly contested, particularly in Duos and Squads. You’ll need to be very focused and fast in order to complete the full farming route.

Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Embark Studios

Blue Gate

Blue Gate tends to have a good chance of dropping Blueprints, potentially because it generally has a high number of containers which can hold lots of items; so there’s a higher chance of a Blueprint spawning in each container. In my experience, the best Blueprint farming spots on Blue Gate are Pilgrim’s Peak, Raider’s Refuge, the Ancient Fort, and the Underground Complex beneath the Warehouse .

All of these areas contain a wealth of containers to loot. Raider’s Refuge has less to loot, but the majority of the containers in and around the Refuge are raider containers, which have a high chance of containing Blueprints - particularly during major events.

Stella Montis

On the whole, Stella Montis seems to have a very low drop rate for Blueprints (though a high chance of dropping other high-tier loot). If you do want to try farming Blueprints on this map, the best places to find Blueprints in Stella Montis are Medical Research, Assembly Workshop, and the Business Center . These areas have the highest density of containers to loot on the map.

In addition to this, the Western Tunnel has a few different Security Lockers to loot, so while there’s very little to loot elsewhere in this area of the map, it’s worth hitting those Security Lockers if you spawn there at the start of a match.

That wraps up this primer on how to get all the Blueprints in Arc Raiders as quickly as possible. With the Expedition system constantly resetting a large number of players’ Blueprints, it’s more important than ever to have the most up-to-date information on where to find all these Blueprints.

While you’re here, be sure to check out our Arc Raiders best guns tier list , as well as our primers on the best skills to unlock and all the different Field Depot locations on every map.

ARC Raiders

PS5 , Xbox Series X/S , PC

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