How to play
Two go-karts line up just past the chequered line of a small seaside circuit. After a three-second countdown it is a straight race: the first kart to complete the chosen number of laps wins. You can race 2, 3 or 5 laps on four tracks.
- Two players, one keyboard. Orange steers with A and D, accelerates with W, brakes and reverses with S and drifts with Space. Blue uses the arrow keys and drifts with Enter (or Numpad 0).
- Gamepads work too: the left stick or d-pad steers and accelerates, A drifts. The first pad drives Orange, the second drives Blue.
- On a phone, hold it sideways. Each player owns one half of the screen with a ◀ and ▶ button and a drift button. On touch the gas is automatic, so you only steer and drift.
- Playing alone? Choose vs Bot and pick Easy, Normal or Hard.
- P or Esc pauses, and the race pauses itself when you switch tabs.
The whole track fits on the screen, so you always see both karts. Steering only works while you are rolling, and it is reversed when you back up, just like a real car.
Laps and checkpoints
Every track has six or seven invisible checkpoint gates, marked by faint arrows on the asphalt. A lap only counts when you pass all of them in order, driving the right way. Cutting across the grass to skip a gate means the next finish-line crossing does not count, so you have to go back for the gate you missed. Turning round and crossing the line backwards does not help either. If you point the wrong way, a blinking Wrong way! appears above your kart.
Once the first kart finishes, the other has ten seconds to cross the line. In a photo finish where both karts cross during the same instant, the kart that crossed the line earlier within that instant wins, worked out from how far past the line each kart has travelled. A kart that has finished becomes a see-through ghost: the other kart drives straight through it and gets no slipstream from it. Your best lap on each track is saved and shown on the menu.
Drift turbo
Hold the drift button while you turn at speed and the back of the kart steps out. While you slide, a ring around your helmet fills up. Let go of the drift button and the stored charge fires as a turbo: an instant shove forward plus a few seconds of extra top speed, with a flame from the exhaust. A ring under about a third full does nothing, so a quick tap is not enough. A full ring gives a super turbo.
Drifting also tightens your turn, which helps in hairpins. The catch is that a drift scrubs speed while you hold it, so a long, lazy slide can cost more than the turbo gives back.
Slipstream
Tuck in right behind your rival, facing the same way, and you are out of the wind. After a moment a “Slipstream!” sign appears: your top speed rises and your drift ring starts to fill on its own. Fire that charge with a short tap of the drift button on the next straight. The leader cannot use the slipstream, which keeps races close.
The four tracks
- Meadow: wide, flowing curves and a chicane through mown grass. A good first track.
- Dunes: two long straights joined by a hairpin. The sand verge is slow, so stay on the asphalt.
- Frost: an icy loop with a sharp V-shaped bend. Grip is low even on the road, so brake early and drift through the V.
- Harbor: a night circuit beside the boats under the street lamps, with a tricky inside corner.
Strategy
Brake in a straight line, then turn. Braking while you steer hard makes the kart run wide onto the verge.
Charge on the corner, fire on the exit. Start the drift as you turn in and release it when the kart points down the next straight. The turbo then pushes you along the road instead of into a barrier. In our bot tests, drifting through the corners took about two seconds off a Dunes lap.
Use the leader as a windbreak. On long straights, sit behind the other kart until your ring fills, then pull out and tap drift to slingshot past.
Bumping is allowed. Karts bounce off each other. A nudge can push a rival onto the grass, but a big hit slows you down too.
Practise against the bot. The Hard bot drifts through sharp corners and uses its turbo on the exits, so its lines are worth copying.
If you want a fight rather than a race, Bounce Tanks is a tank duel in a maze of ricocheting shells for the same two seats. Dash Duo is a side-scrolling runner you can play as a race or as a team, and in Trail Duel two riders leave walls behind them until one of them runs out of room.
