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Ghost Car Challenge
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About the game
Ghost Car Challenge is a time-trial racer where you never have to wait for anyone at the start line. Every track comes with a board of lap times set by "ghost drivers", and each time is a real recorded lap. Tap one of the rows and you race against that driver: a ghost of the car appears on the track and repeats the exact line, braking and mistakes of the original lap. Get ahead of it and you have beaten that time; stay behind and you know exactly where you lost it.
There are seven tracks: Downtown, a concrete canyon between skyscrapers; Desert island; Salt flats, a huge white plain marked only by red flags; Midnight run; Uphill; Go kart; and Vulcan. There are ten cars, from a light open-wheeler to heavier road cars, and each has its own grip, power and steering, so a lap time set in one car is a different problem in another. The game keeps your own best lap on every track and adds it to the board, and a trophy button shows a championship table that adds the best times of all tracks.
It is a small, quick game: one lap is under a minute, the car responds at once and a restart is one tap away.
Playing it here
Click Play. The board of the first track opens; tap a time to challenge that driver, or press Change Car, Prev. Track and Next Track to pick your own setup. Hold W (or the up arrow) for gas, S for the brake and steer with A and D. The small menu button at the bottom of the screen pauses the race, restarts the lap or takes you back to the board. The game stores your best laps, your name and your settings in this browser, and nothing is sent anywhere.
Controls
| Key | Action |
|---|---|
| W or Up | gas |
| S or Down | brake |
| A / D or Left / Right | steer |
| menu button (bottom of the screen) | pause, restart the lap, change track, car or opponent |
| touch (phone) | touch the screen for gas and tilt the phone to steer |
Tips
Brake before the corner, not in it. The cars have a lot of power and the tracks are narrow, so a wall costs more time than a gentle line ever would.
Pick the car for the track. On the salt flats a fast car with soft steering is fine; in the city canyon a car that turns sharply wins time in every bend.
Start with a slower ghost. Challenge a time lower on the board first, learn the line and then work your way up to the top of the table.
FAQ
Are the other drivers real people? No. The names on the board come from a name generator of the game, and the times are lap records that ship with the game. Nobody else is online.
Does it work offline? It needs no connection after the page has loaded, and it makes no request to anybody else.
Why is there a country for every driver? Each driver on the board has a made-up licence with a name and a flag; you can set your own name and country from the main menu of the game.
Credits and licence
Ghost Car Challenge was made by Dusan Halicky: the programming, cars, tracks, textures and sounds. The skyboxes are by Zachery "skiingpenguins" Slocum (CC BY-SA 3.0) and, for the Downtown track, by Emil Persson, known as Humus (CC BY 3.0). The game is free software under the GNU General Public License, version 3. The complete source of the version played here, with the two small changes we made (a stricter security policy and the credits text) and the build script, is linked from this page, together with the licence texts.