Neon Drift

About the game

Neon Drift is an arcade racing game in the style of the old behind-the-car racers. The road is drawn the classic way, one slice at a time, with curves bending the horizon, hills that hide what is coming, palms and billboards rushing past and a pixel-art sky in the background. The screen is small and sharp on purpose, so it looks like a game from a handheld console of the 1990s.

You start a race on the grid with seven rivals and run three laps. The nitro gives you a burst of speed above your top speed and refills as you drive, faster when you sit in the slipstream of the car in front. The thrusters make your car hop: use them to clear a slower car, or to land on top of it, which crushes it, though you take a hard landing too. Winning pays prize money, and the money goes into the garage.

There are five cars, each with its own strengths: the balanced Vortex, the heavy Bruiser, the nimble Hornet, the Phantom with its huge nitro tank and the Mirage that jumps best. In the garage you buy parts in six slots (engine, turbo, tires, nitro tank, thrusters and armour, three tiers each), repaint the car in one of eight colours and repair it. Your progress is saved in your browser. There are three tracks: Coast Run, with palms and long sweeping curves, Sunset City, with tight corners between the towers, and Desert Night, with big hills and big air.

Made with AI help

The author says openly that the game was made with the help of AI. The code was written by AI coding agents under his direction, the pixel art and the effects were generated with a service called PixelLab, and the music and sound effects are produced by a script that synthesizes them. The licence of every part is clear and allows sharing, and nothing comes from another game.

Playing it here

Click Play and wait while the game loads (about 13 MB, downloaded only when you press the button). Press Enter on the title screen, then choose Solo Race, a track and a car, and confirm with Enter. The game scales to your window in whole steps, so it is sharpest in a big window. The online rooms of the original game (they need a game server) are not part of this version.

Controls

Every key can be changed under Options, Controls. A gamepad works too.

Tips

Save the nitro for the straights. The gauge refills on the road, so use it often, but a burst in a corner sends you wide.

Stay behind a rival to refill. Driving in the slipstream of another car fills the nitro faster, and then you pull out and pass.

Jump to pass. A thruster jump lets you skip over a slow car instead of braking behind it. Remember the landing costs some of your car's hull.

Spend the money. After a few wins, the engine and tires are the best first upgrades for most cars.

FAQ

Is there an online mode? The original game has online rooms for up to eight players, but they need a server and are not part of this version. Solo races against seven computer cars work fully.

Was the game made with AI? Yes, see the section above. The author states it in the project.

Does it work on a phone? It needs a keyboard, so it is meant for computers.

Credits and licence

Neon Drift was made by Henrique Rocha Serrano. The code is under the MIT licence. The art is under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0: "Neon Drift art, Henrique Rocha Serrano, CC BY 4.0". The music and sound effects are also under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0: "Neon Drift audio, Henrique Rocha Serrano, CC BY 4.0". The licence text is on the Creative Commons site, and the source of this build is linked from this page. The game runs on Godot Engine 4.7.2, under the MIT licence.

Changes made for this site: the Online and Quit buttons of the main menu are hidden (the online rooms need a game server, and quitting only freezes a browser page), the game no longer forces its window to 1280 by 720 pixels (which cropped the picture in a smaller frame) and one data file is renamed so that the exported game can read it. Nothing else in the game was changed.