Micro Racer

About the game

Four small cars line up on a pixelated dirt track, edged with red and white kerbs. The track is random each time, so there is no layout to memorise. You race three laps against three computer-driven cars, and finishing first sets your best time.

The cars are driven with a physics engine, which gives the slides and bumps a real weight. Holding the drift key makes the car slip through bends instead of braking, and boost pickups on the road give a short burst of speed. A countdown starts the race, and the top left shows your lap, position and time.

The graphics are drawn in code, and the sound is synthesised. Your best time is saved in the browser.

Playing it here

Click Play and the game opens on its title screen. Press Play there to start. The sound can be turned off with the speaker icon in the corner, and the game also has a fullscreen button.

Controls

Arrows or WASD to steer and accelerate, Space to drift.

A few things worth knowing

Drift the tight bends. Braking costs more time than a controlled slide.

Take the boosts. Even a small detour for a pickup usually pays off on a straight.

FAQ

Is the track always the same? No, it is generated randomly for each race.

Credits and licence

Micro Racer is one of the games in LittleJS Arcade by Frank Force, and it runs on his LittleJS engine. Both are released under the MIT licence; the licence text is linked from this page. The collection's repository includes notes for AI coding assistants, so the code was written at least in part with AI help. The graphics are drawn by the code and the sounds are synthesised, so the game loads no image or audio files. The source code is on GitHub.