Summit Rider

About this game

Summit Rider is a side-on driving game about one machine, two pedals and a hillside that never repeats. You have a suspended all-terrain buggy with a roll cage, a throttle and a brake, and a route that is built as you reach it. Your score is the distance you cover. The run ends when you land on the cage instead of the wheels, or when the tank runs dry. The machine is simulated rather than animated. Both wheels sit on struts that compress over every rise and extend over every crest, the engine sends its torque to whichever wheel has weight on it, and the drive force pushes at the contact patch — a metre below the centre of mass. That last detail is the whole game. Full throttle lifts the front wheel, and on a climb it keeps lifting: the machine is built to sit right on the edge of looping itself under power, so climbing a steep face is a matter of feeding in as much throttle as it will take and no more. Ease off too much and you stall on the slope. Hold it flat and you go over backwards. Once you leave the ground the pedals change job. The throttle pitches the nose up and the brake pitches it down, and a jump is over in about two thirds of a second, so a landing is something you set up rather than something you watch happen. Come down nose-first on a rising face and the roll cage finds the dirt. Come down flat and you carry your speed into the next hill. Land past vertical after a full rotation in the air and the flip pays a bonus. The route is not noise. Hills are a bounded random walk, so no gradient anywhere is steeper than the machine can climb, and ramps are placed deliberately: only on ground that is already flat, never close enough together to launch you off one into the face of the next, and never without a run-out to land in. Every seed can be driven. Whether you drive it is the question. Fuel is the pace clock. It drains while the engine runs and cans are spaced along the route, so a run that flows stays topped up and a run that dithers, stalls and reverses does not. Coins hang in arcs over the crests, usually on the line you would not otherwise take, and every twelve of them fire a boost that carries you up something you had no business climbing. Three routes, each with its own record. Foothills rolls gently and is where you learn the throttle. Ridge is steeper and darker. Summit is above the snow line and asks for everything you have. One machine, two pedals, no download.

Controls

In the air the throttle pitches the nose up and the brake pitches it down.

Keyboard

• Right, Up, D or W for throttle.
• Left, Down, A or S to brake, which becomes reverse below a crawl.
• Enter restarts.

Touch

• The Throttle and Brake buttons under the picture, or hold the right half of the screen for throttle and the left half for brake.

How to play

Get as far as you can.

On the ground

• Hold the throttle to drive, but not flat out on a climb: the drive force pushes below the centre of mass, so full power lifts the front wheel and holding it lifts the machine right over.
• Feed in as much as the hill will take and ease off when the nose comes up.

In the air

• The pedals stop driving and start steering your attitude — throttle for nose up, brake for nose down — so aim the body at the slope you are about to land on.
• Landing on the wheels keeps your speed; landing on the roll cage ends the run.

Fuel and boost

• Watch the fuel bar: it drains whenever the engine is running and the only way to refill it is the green cans along the route, so keeping moving is cheaper than crawling.
• Coins sit in arcs over the crests, and every twelve fill the boost meter, which fires itself and gives you a couple of seconds of extra power.
• Pick Foothills, Ridge or Summit for gentler or steeper ground; each keeps its own best distance.

Read the full Summit Rider rules and strategy →