Turbo Rush

About this game

Turbo Rush is a point-to-point road race against a clock that is always about to beat you. The stage runs out ahead through banked corners, blind crests and long dipping straights, and the only thing keeping you alive is the next gate: drive under one of the gantries that span the road and it hands you back some seconds. Miss the rhythm and the clock does the rest. The car is simulated rather than dialled. A six-speed box works through its ratios and the engine pulls hardest in the middle of each one, so the last few kilometres per hour arrive slowly and have to be earned on the straights. Grip is finite: corner harder than the tyres allow and the car starts to run wide, bleeding speed for as long as you hold the slide. Braking pitches the weight forward and lets the nose bite, which is what makes a late brake into a corner worth attempting. Crests come up fast enough to unload the wheels, and a car in the air is a car that is not steering. The road is the opponent as much as the cars are. Corners throw you toward the outside the faster you take them, so the line you want is never the line the car wants. Drop two wheels onto the dirt and the speed bleeds away immediately, which is why the fast way round a corner is almost always the tidy way. Rivals hold a real racing line rather than driving on rails. They apex the corners, they lift for them, they move over rather than block, and they run on a rubber band that keeps the field within reach instead of letting it disappear up the road. Tuck in behind one on a straight and the slipstream tows you past. Easy, Normal and Hard change how well they corner, how many of them there are and how generous the clock is, so Easy is genuinely finishable by somebody who has never played it. Each of the three stages is a different time of day — a sunset coast, a neon city at night, an alpine dawn — with its own sky, its own scenery and its own weather in the distance. The daily time trial is the same track for everybody in the world on the same date, rotating through all four looks, with the cars cleared away and nothing to race but the clock and a translucent ghost of your own best run. Beat the ghost and it becomes the new ghost. Your best time of the day is the one that counts, so a single bad corner costs you seconds rather than the whole day, and finishing at all keeps the streak alive.

Controls

Drag anywhere on the road to steer — the further from centre, the harder the turn. The car changes gear by itself.

Keyboard

• Left/Right arrows or A/D to steer.
• Space or Down to brake, Enter to restart.

Touch

• Hold the bottom-left and bottom-right of the screen to steer and tap the brake button.

How to play

Reach the finish line before the clock hits zero. You accelerate automatically, so the game is about steering and braking, not throttle.

The clock and the ribbon

• Every gate you drive under adds seconds back to the clock.
• The ribbon along the bottom shows how far you have come, where the remaining gates are and where the rivals are.

Speed

• Corners push you toward the outside at speed — ease off or brake into them, because holding a slide scrubs speed and putting two wheels on the dirt scrubs more.
• Sit close behind a rival on a straight and the slipstream meter fills and tows you past; hitting one instead costs you most of your momentum.

Daily

• Switch to Daily for one seeded track a day, no rivals, and a ghost of your own best run to chase.

Read the full Turbo Rush rules and strategy →