Speedway

About the game

You sit behind a red open-wheel car, with the road stretching to the horizon between mountains and trees. The road curves and rises, and rival cars appear ahead. The time on the top left counts down, and you race to pass as many cars as you can before it hits zero.

The scenery is drawn with the old pseudo-3D trick of road strips, so the road bends and rolls as you move. Leaving the tarmac and driving on the grass scrubs off speed, and hitting a rival slows you too. Speed in miles per hour, time and lap are shown at the top.

The game is drawn in code with synthesised engine and effect sounds. Your best score 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

Up to accelerate, Down to brake, Left / Right to steer.

A few things worth knowing

Stay on the road. The grass costs more speed than any rival.

Lift in the bends. Easing off before a sharp curve is faster than correcting after it.

FAQ

What ends the game? The run ends when the timer reaches zero.

Credits and licence

Speedway 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.