// GAME GUIDE //

TrackBlitz

Synthwave time attack · free in your browser · no download, no account

What is TrackBlitz?

TrackBlitz is a time attack racer built around one lap done properly. You ride a neon circuit, the clock runs, and the whole game is the gap between the lap you just drove and the lap you know you could drive. There is no damage model and no fuel. Losing time is the only punishment, and it is enough.

Three tracks ship with the game and each one is a different problem. Silverline is the classic circuit: sweeping curves, one hairpin switchback that punishes an early turn-in, and a rollercoaster drop that hands back everything the climb took. Summit is a relentless climb to 1400 metres through rolling humps and tight hairpins in daylight, with one dramatic plunge in the middle of it. Vortex is the strange one: two and a half spiralling loops ascending 3500 metres under an arctic night sky, ending in a boost-launched freefall to the line. There is a tutorial track too, and it is worth the two minutes.

Every track has gold, silver and bronze medal times. They are the real progression: bronze is a lap you finished, silver is a lap you drove, and gold means you found the line. Silverline's gold is 48 seconds, Summit's is 52, Vortex's is 55. Leaderboards run daily, weekly, monthly and all time, per track, so a good lap today counts for something even against people who have been playing for months.

Alongside the clock there is racing. Singleplayer lets you fill the grid with bots, and multiplayer runs on lobbies with a share code: create one, send the code to four friends, and up to five of you race together. Both modes can be played with items switched on or off, which turns the same track into either a clean time trial or something considerably more chaotic.

And there is a map editor. It builds tracks two ways, tile by tile on a grid or by dropping control points on a curve and shaping the elevation between them, and it paints in three environments: Night City, Day Mountain and Arctic Night. Tracks can be saved, tested for a lap time on the spot, downloaded as a file and imported again, so a track you build is a track you can hand to somebody else.

How to play

• Carry speed: braking is time you do not get back. The fast lap is the one where you lifted least.
• Take the inside of a hairpin late: turning in early scrubs speed for the whole exit, which is where the lap is actually won.
• Bank the nitro: it is a 1.5 second boost on a 10 second recharge, so it fires roughly four times a lap if you never waste one.
• Run the ghost: your best lap replays alongside you. Where the ghost pulls away is the corner to fix.
• Grab items: three pickup slots sit on the track and respawn eight seconds after they are taken.

Controls

On desktop: up arrow or W to accelerate, left and right arrows or A and D to steer, F for nitro, space to fire the item you are holding. On a phone the steering is your choice in options, either on-screen buttons or a touchpad you drag, and auto-accelerate can be switched on so you only ever have to think about the line. Vibration on impacts is on by default and can be turned off, as can the FPS counter and the ghost car. The game installs to a phone home screen as a web app if you want it out of the browser chrome.

Items

Item races add three pickups, and they are deliberately few. The EMP mine is dropped behind you and arms after half a second, so it is a trap for whoever is chasing rather than a weapon. The homing rocket acquires the nearest rider ahead and always travels ten percent faster than a boosted car, which means it will catch its target unless the target uses the track to lose it. Iron nails scatter a patch across the racing line that anybody, you included, can still drive over. The same item never appears more than twice in a row, so the pickup you take is never a pure lottery.

Tips from the developers

• Learn one track properly before touching the other two. The lines transfer; the memorisation does not.
• Save the nitro for the exit of a slow corner, not the middle of a straight. It multiplies the speed you already have.
• On Vortex, the spiral rewards a steady lean over constant correction. Fight it and you will scrub speed for two and a half loops.
• On Summit, the plunge is free time if you arrive at it straight. Anything else and you land sideways.
• In item races, hold a mine rather than firing it. An item slot in your hand is a slot the game will not refill with something worse.
• Chase the ghost, not the leaderboard. The ghost is the only opponent that tells you exactly where you lost the tenth.
• Bronze on all three tracks first. It teaches you the layouts far faster than repeating one track for gold.

Under the hood

TrackBlitz is made by MobX Games, a small indie studio in Germany. It runs on Three.js in a plain browser tab, with the track surface built from a spline at load time rather than shipped as a model, which is what makes the editor possible: a track is a short list of control points and elevations, so it is small enough to hand around as a file. Multiplayer runs over a WebSocket server that syncs positions and interpolates between updates, and the bots drive the same physics the player does rather than following a scripted path.

FAQ