Burnout City

Summary

Behind the basic-looking streets of Burnout City lies a game with a huge selection of game modes, along with one of the most impressively varied vehicle lineups you’ll see in a browser game (with heaps of tuning and customization, too). On top of that, you’re also given an in-game cheat code that provides you with an infinite money printer!

One minute you’re racing checkpoints, and the next you’re playing cops and robbers in open-wheel Formula racers (where you can take on either role). While the game modes aren’t particularly in-depth, it’s the variety (combined with the large free-roam city) that makes it perfect for spending an hour or so messing around.

If you’re sold at this point, and hoping it’ll be a sick drifting game, you’ll be disappointed (sorry!). The super-grippy setups make the cars cling to the road (although you can kick out the back end a little with the handbrake), but the racing and chaos are at the forefront rather than big skids, unfortunately.

For those who like a challenge, you can earn cash through the events, along with speed, stunt, and “drift” bonuses. Alternatively, you can use the in-game “Testing Panel” to print endless cash and skip the grind by unlocking everything near-instantly (or a bit of both, if you fancy).

Features

• Release date – 12 November, 2024
• Difficulty – Beginner/Intermediate
• Levels/environments – 2 (day and night city locations)
• Number of vehicles – 11
• Vehicle customization/upgrades – Yes
• Multiplayer – No
• Mobile – No
• Developer – FreezeNova

Physics

First things first, Burnout City is a grip-focused arcade racer, not a dedicated drift game (despite offering “drift” points).

Most of the cars feel like they’re on rails until you hold Space, which kicks the rear outward a little, but you can’t really power through with it. It’s useful, immediate, and easy for a beginner to understand, but you certainly won’t be learning throttle control, counter-steering, and weight transfer in this one.

While there’s damage, it’s more sparks and dents than true panel crumbling, and the damage bar determines how much abuse your car can take. It gives races and chases a useful risk, but anyone hoping for detailed deformation will find a fairly simple system underneath the chaos.

If you’re after a drifting game with a similar vibe to this one, make sure you check out Burnout Drift 2: Hilltop, which opts for mountain roads, traffic, and weight transfer to offer a proper drift challenge.

FreezeNova’s own Drift King goes even further, offering several maps, more in-depth drivetrain and suspension tuning, along with public and custom online multiplayer lobbies. JDM fans will likely prefer Drift Hunters Pro, which is a similar Japanese-focused offering from the same team.

Graphics

At the start of each game, the selector lets you choose whether you want to enjoy what the city has to offer in the day or at night. They’re both based on the same city, but the darker option gives the roads a lil’ more of a street racing vibe.

Although some of the cars look sweet, even on the Ultra graphics setting, the city and the (low-poly) traffic both look a little basic. There’s plenty of variety and backroads to explore, but nowhere near the density or detail found in other browser games like Drift Hunters MAX. There, you’ll not only get stunning graphics, but also judged drifting challenges with online leaderboards alongside a similar open-world traffic mode to this one. No money printer though, unfortunately!

For the ultimate nighttime experience, UNBOUNDED is another worthwhile step up if wanna modify street cars (with widebody kits and all sorts) in a stunning city environment paired with an online multiplayer mode.

Controls

PC/laptop/Chromebook

• W/Up arrow – Accelerate
• S/Down arrow – Brake/reverse
• A/Left arrow – Steer left
• D/Right arrow – Steer right
• Space – Handbrake
• F – Nitrous
• N – Neutral
• C – Change camera
• B – Look back
• L – Low-beam headlights
• K – High-beam headlights
• Shift – Gear up
• Ctrl – Gear down
• Z – Hazard lights
• Q – Left indicator
• E – Right indicator
• I – Engine on/off
• R – Respawn
• 1-5 – Select exact gear

You can bind your own controls, and “Reset All” restores the default mappings. Needless to say, it’s not often you see this many buttons or options in a browser game!

Mobile (iOS/Android)

Burnout City isn’t available on mobiles, but we’ve got a huge collection of other mobile games.

How to Play Burnout City

Initial Setup

Enter your name and press “Submit” to hit up the main menu. The bottom navigation takes you to Drive (hit up the streets), Vehicles, Customization, and Settings, and your current cash appears at the top.

Settings offers Low, Medium, High, and Ultra graphics presets, along with audio and music volume sliders, control rebinding, and the option to restore defaults.

You begin with $15,000 in the bank and the free old-school Mustang Fastback starter car. If you fancy something different, the $15k is already enough for the El Camino, lifted pickup, or the E30 M3 (not bad, huh?!). As you play, cash comes from activities and from driving at speed, performing stunts, or drifting in Free Ride. Or, if you don’t wanna wait…

The “Testing Panel” in the bottom left of the screen makes the cash-earning process entirely optional. Hitting “Add Money” gives you $10,000 per click (if only!), “Unlock All Cars” gives you the complete garage instantly, and “Reset Save” lets you start over (if you regret cheating!). This lets you choose whether to work through the rewards as intended, or treat Burnout City as an instant sandbox and get straight to work building ridiculous modded cars.

Choose either “City Day” or “City Midnight” when you’re ready to drive. They use the same location, but with different lighting, so pick the atmosphere you’d prefer.

Getting Started

The city provides a free-roam playground and an activity hub. Glowing markers at the start launch the events, while the Garage and Repair Station let you change vehicles or fix your ride’s damage without leaving the city. Returning to the main menu also resets damage, and choosing “Restart” lets you spawn back to the activity-selection area instantly (again, fully repaired).

Keep an eye on the speedo and current gear in the top left, with the small blue nitrous bar and minimap beneath them. The (green) Damage bar sits in the top right, and the opposite-side Felony indicator initially stays gray, which comes alive once your antics get the cops to put down their donuts and scramble into action!

If you’ve enjoyed the roaming, racing, sliding, and stunt package, Top Speed Racing 3D is the most popular similar pick, expanding beyond the city with airport and desert areas, along with more to do in the game modes.

For something with more unique game modes, but more smoky burnouts and drifting instead of racing, Force Drift Racing: Aussie Burnout offers (Summernats-style) Burnout, Drift, and Showcase modes based on the Australian burnout culture.

Game Modes

Race

Race puts you up against several rivals on a checkpoint route. Every car has a health bar, so winning is partly about speed and also about avoiding wrecking your ride on the route to the finish.

Don’t forget to use your nitrous where the road opens up, but make sure you watch the visible checkpoint gates closely. They don’t show up on the minimap in this mode, and a fully upgraded car will happily blast past a hidden turn.

Pursuit

Instead of being chased, Pursuit turns you into the “cop”. Well, it’s more of a case of imagining the driver behind the wheel just wrecked your best friend’s ride and you’re seeking revenge!

Follow the direction arrow, catch up, and total their vehicle before the timer expires, all while protecting your own car. Forcing the enemy into hard hits into walls and oncoming traffic (while avoiding them) is the best way to master this one.

Checkpoint

You get the choice of two timed routes. Each gate adds six seconds, and the next one appears on both the minimap and top-center arrow (so keep your eyes peeled). Some markers are easy to misread at times, so use both guides rather than purely relying on the map.

Trailblazer

Trailblazer also has two routes, but now you’re following and (hopefully) knocking over every cone along the way. Each cone adds one second to your remaining time, and missing one forces you to turn around, or you’ll fail. It is kinda like a race where you’re deliberately trying to hit everything, and you can’t afford to go off-line, which can make it decent for handling practice.

Free Ride

Free Ride drops the event timer and lets you explore, earn cash, drift, perform stunts, and antagonize the police.

Raise the Felony bar, and a cop appears on the minimap to hunt you down (kinda the reverse of Pursuit mode). This time, you’re the fugitive, and staying trapped near the police for too long can get you busted even if your car hasn’t been totaled. Alongside all the other game modes on offer, it also makes for a pretty neat police game since you can choose either side of the chase.

Car List and Customization

The 11-vehicle garage is one of the more varied we’ve seen in our browser games, and it gets increasingly wild as you click through.

• 1970s Ford Mustang II – Free starter car
• Chevy El Camino – $12,000
• Lifted pickup – $14,000
• BMW E30 M3 – $15,000
• BMW E36 M3 – $18,000
• BMW E46 M3 – $26,000
• Dodge Durango – $45,000
• Nissan Skyline R34 (Custom widebody) – $34,000
• Caterham-style kit car – $42,500
• Porsche 911 (993) – $65,000
• Open-wheeler/Formula racer – $100,000

The E30 M3 looks sick, even with the stock aftermarket wheels. The R34 is less convincing at the rear, but its bonkers custom body makes it memorable (it’s.. unique, to say the least).

Each vehicle has a green bar (current spec), and the additional orange section shows the potential improvement once you upgrade the acceleration, handling, and top speed. You get five performance tiers for each of them (with escalating prices) to unlock its true capabilities.

Customization is surprisingly impressive, too. There are nine paint presets, seven aftermarket wheel options, 14 spoilers (and a wing-removal option), side-specific decals, and six neon underglow colors (for the ultimate 90s vibe).

Headlights and wheel smoke get RGB sliders, while the Mechanic menu separates front and rear camber, spring force, ride height, and damping. The shopping cart lets you test-fit parts before you buy, rotate the showroom view, and decide whether you want to buy the finished combination in bulk.

The setup does have quirks. Like a lot of you will be familiar with from other browser games, the positive and negative camber behave opposite to their labels, and there’s no wheel offset or wheel-color adjustment. Some rims will be hidden inside the fenders, though the aftermarket options can often improve the fitment, so have a play around. If you’re not sure what these settings mean, our guides to stanced cars and negative camber explain picking the ultimate ride height and camber in more detail.

The Formula-style racer is arguably the most fun (and unique) vehicle in Burnout City. You can slam it, add heaps of camber, max out the upgrades, and smash it into traffic. Amusingly, its nose being so low means it can slip beneath other vehicles and launch them into the air, even the buses! You still receive damage, but the other cars tend to have the more dramatic sudden airborne launch.

If you enjoyed the open-wheeler experience, Formula Traffic Racer turns the idea into a high-speed challenge, where you’ll take the single-seater experience out of the city and onto busy public highways to try and weave through fast-moving traffic without crashing.

Advanced Tips & Tricks

In Race mode, watch out for the gates instead of the minimap

Checkpoints aren’t shown on the minimap in Race, so you’ll need to scan the road ahead and ease off before sharp corners to make sure the checkpoint isn’t hiding down there.

Piling on extra speed only helps when you’re sure where the next gate is, as you’ll waste more time than you’ll gain by going back on yourself (and potentially wasting nitrous in the process).

Combine both navigation guides in Checkpoint

Unlike Race, Checkpoint markers appear on the minimap, but their angle can sometimes make them hard to see. Cross-check the map with the arrow at the top of the screen, and remember that each gate adds six seconds.

Make sure you collect every cone in Trailblazer

Missing just one cone will mean you’ll fail to complete the level, so that needs to be your top priority rather than just mashing the throttle. You’ll need to showcase a perfect combination of speed and agility to reach the finish.

Repair your car if you’ve taken on too much damage

Before it gets too low, visit the Repair Station to keep a Free Ride session going. If you’re ready to change cars (or tune again), returning to the main menu resets the damage anyway, so don’t worry about driving across the city to fix it up.

If you get bored of grinding, you can just hit up the money printer

Earning cash is the legit way to progress in the game. However, if unlocking the ultimate rides and upgrades is the main appeal, you can add a load of money and/or unlock the entire garage to experience the game to its full potential. You can always reset your progress later if you change your mind.

Burnout City FAQ