Drift Car: 40 Levels

Summary

Every race kicks off the same way in this hilarious and ridiculously fun game where being the next carriage in the drift train is the main focus. You’re sat at the back of a five-car grid as the four rivals (or homies, you choose) in front throw it down sideways.

Within seconds they’re often bashing doors, flipping over, and bouncing off the walls. It’s absolute carnage, and massively entertaining (especially when you’re right in the middle of it!).

Among all the chaos, you’ll (hopefully) be drifting door-to-door in a full-on drift train from the start to the finish, every single race. Hardly any drifting games encourage tandems and trains, so it’s a welcome breath of fresh air, even if it isn’t the most refined.

If you thought the drifting was amusing, wait til you see the garage. You’ve got an S15 that identifies as a Lexus, a Mk4 Supra that’s convinced it’s a Ford Focus, and a JZX100 that’s (apparently) a Honda. Only the Mustang gets its real name, but it’s all part of the light-hearted vibe you’ll experience throughout. Well, until the later levels, anyway!

If you’re after a quick, ridiculous dose of tandem chaos, it’s an absolute blast, and once you’ve smashed your way through all 40 levels, there’s plenty more realistic options in our drifting games section if you wanna improve your skills with a little more grip (and less body roll).

Features

• Release date – August 2025
• Difficulty – Beginner/Intermediate
• Levels/environments – 40 levels
• Number of vehicles – 7
• Vehicle customization/upgrades – No
• Multiplayer – No
• Mobile – Yes
• Developer – 8Games

Physics

In the opening levels, you’ll be drifting on an ice rink, so it shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise that the handling’s pretty slippery. Feather the throttle slightly, and your rear tires vanish in a cloud of smoke, and once you’re sideways, the car locks in nicely. Lift off, transition, and it flicks into the next transition without too much fuss.

The countersteering looks a little odd at times. Your front wheels just sit there pointing straight ahead while you’ve got the full weight of the car swinging round. Then there’s the body roll you’ll need to consider. Most of them might look like fully-specced comp cars in the garage, but mid-corner they lean like they’re on factory springs from the ’70s.

Needless to say, it’s not the most realistic, but you’ll get the hang of it within a few corners, and it’s great fun once you do (a few of the cars you’ll soon unlock feel quite a bit better, too). At times, it’s got a bit of an FR Legends vibe, but without the cartoon-y visuals.

Graphics

The visuals are intentionally simple, and it gets moody and super dark on the night levels, where you’re relying on the blue and pink neon lighting wrapped around the outside of the ice rink to see where you’re going.

None of the cars have lights, which would’ve been a great addition, and it’d also make it a little easier to see the upcoming barriers!

Minor faults aside, it’s simple but cheerful, with the physics and fun elements clearly being the bigger focus (and we’re not complaining).

The cars look cool, though some clearly got a bit more love than others. In the garage, a few look to have perfect fitment, while others sit at ride heights that’d get you laughed out of a car meet. But, when you unlock them, you’ll realize they were just teasing you, as they’ve all got pretty comical body roll when they’re at full tilt.

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
• R – Reset car

The handbrake’s more of a gentle nudge than a proper e-brake yank, and feels more like slight left-foot braking. It scrubs a bit of speed and stretches a drift, but the car gets sideways so easily that you’ll never need it to initiate. If you’re curious how you’d apply it in a real-world drift car (and how it differs), our how to drift guide breaks it down.

Mobile (iOS/Android)

• On-screen throttle – Accelerate
• On-screen brake – Brake
• On-screen left steering control – Steer left
• On-screen right steering control – Steer right

On your phone, you lose the handbrake and the reset button, so you’ll need to rely on lifting off a little earlier, and using the brakes when need be. If you’re after more games which are perfect for quick sideways sessions on the go, make sure you check out our mobile games section.

How to Play Drift Car: 40 Levels

Initial Setup

The main menu is super simple. Your bank balance sits in the top right, and Settings (the spanner/cog icon) lets you adjust the sound and music sliders. That’s your lot.

Hit “Play” and the garage hands you the keys to the free “Lexus” (which is clearly an S15). Since that’s all you’ll be able to afford at the start (it could be way worse, right?), choose that, then head to level 1.

Getting Started

As soon as you touch the throttle, the chaos starts. It’s you against your four rivals (or tandem buddies, you decide), and you’ll always start at the back. Thankfully, that provides a front-row seat for when the action kicks off in the opening seconds.

Thankfully, every driver knows what’s up. It’s all about sitting sideways through every corner, so you’ll spend the whole race knocking on each other’s doors. The other cars drive like they’re out in their missile cars at Ebisu, so expect a few (or all) of them to bash your door on the way past (and don’t be surprised if they launch into the air, either).

It’s kinda like Destruction Derby meets drifting. It’s all absolutely nuts, but that’s what it’s all about. If the carnage ends up being your favorite bit, our stunts and crash games take the destruction a whole lot further, with plenty of damage and BeamNG-style games.

There’s no minimap, so how many corners are left is anyone’s guess until the big, glowing arch pops up to signify the finish.

Cross the line and your “Drift Coin” (what you’ve earned from sliding about) gets added to the “Mission Reward” for your Total. Qualify and you’ll get a $1,000 bonus, whether you won or scraped through in fourth (although this changes for the second half of the levels).

Fail (by coming last) and you’ll get just $100. Thankfully, it’s an instant one-click retry, and you do keep your Drift Coin. Winning doesn’t really matter. Drifting clean all the way usually pays more than grabbing the lead, so you might as well just roll with that.

Before you get too excited, 50,000 points doesn’t mean a $50,000 payday. Things don’t convert quite that smoothly, but you’ll still be able to unlock your favorite rides soon enough.

While this is one of the few tandem drift-based games out there, the closest thing to this is Arcade Car Drift, which squeezes four sliding cars onto a cartoony top-down track where your drift score beats your finishing position. It’s got a similar vibe, 

Fancy a drift train with real players instead? Drift Hunters Pro lets you tandem in public or private online lobbies in JDM heroes like the S15 in this one, alongside the likes of the FD RX-7. Its sibling, Drift King, swaps the Jap machinery for supercars, but keeps the touge roads. Or, if you fancy something totally different, our multiplayer games have way more variety to choose from.

Game Modes

There’s just one mode. As you might have guessed already, it’s a 40-level campaign, where you unlock one level at a time.

They’re short enough that some last just a few seconds, and they’re split into two halves, with slightly different (undisclosed) rules:

• Levels 1-20 – Avoid last place and you’re through to the next level.
• Levels 21-40 – You’ll revisit the same levels and locations from the start, but this time, the rivals are sharper and you’ll need to bag a top-three finish to progress.

Given how much the rivals crash, coming last in the first half takes some doing. You basically have to get stuck. Even then, the R key might bail you out with sufficient time.

The second half is a different story, though, especially on the short levels where you’ve only got a couple of corners to get from the back into the top three. Thankfully, the rivals still crash all the time, so you might get lucky on the final corner and just clinch the win. Well, maybe not the win, but enough to scrape through!

When the later levels stop putting up a fight, Slippery Drift Racing is a perfect step up. It’s you against a single rival, where you’ll need to race across twisty touge runs, against other JDM cars to win (pink-slip style), along with handling that won’t let you off so easily.

Races start at about 10-15 seconds and gradually get longer as you progress, swapping between day and night as you go. The races at each environment go short to longer, then reset again when the location changes. You’ll visit four varied locations:

• Ice rink
• Nighttime ice, with all that neon
• City street circuit
• Nighttime city streets (feels like proper streeto)

Once you’ve done all of them, it’s back to the ice again for the tougher second round (after level 20).

Car List

Each car comes with its own stats, but you’ll probably be too busy laughing at the names to notice:

• Lexus (Nissan Silvia S15) – Free. A carbon-fiber hood, decals, real drift-car styling, and the slowest car in the game.
• Nissan (Mazda RX-8) – $8,000. Right country, very wrong company (good try!).

• Ford Focus (Mk4 Toyota Supra) – $15,000. A 2JZ legend in an old-school Falken-inspired livery, done dirty with the name. Easily the funniest (but sickest) twist.
• Pontiac (Maserati GranTurismo) – $22,000. Who knows. Your guess is as good as ours!
• Honda (Toyota JZX100 Mark II Tourer V JZX100) – $30,000. One of my favorite cars ever, and one I’m always stoked to see in browser games. Definitely don’t yell “VTEC, y0” when you reach the upper revs.

• Focus RS (Nissan Silvia PS13) – $45,000. A slammed ’90s JDM street build that looks sick in the garage, then rolls out on track with hilariously bad offset and fitment. At least it got treated to the better Ford Focus badge, I guess!
• Mustang (Ford Mustang) – $60,000. Finally, one they got right! It’s got the best stats in every category, and an intercooler poking out the front that wouldn’t last two seconds against these drivers.

If the icons in the garage have you reminiscing, take a throwback to the JDM cars of the nineties, which covers the Mk4 Supra (not the Focus, unfortunately), the Silvia, and the JZX100.

What you see is what you get here. The cars are pre-tuned, and there’s nothing to bolt-on or upgrade. You can’t even change the paint or the liveries.

Dying to sort out the fitment and fit some upgrades onto some of these? Unreal Drift Dubai lets you swap out engines and dial in the perfect stance on some wild-looking drift builds, then let ’em loose for nighttime streeto.

For a JDM garage you can tune to your heart’s content, with far more realistic physics to match, look no further than the ultimate browser-based drifter, Drift Hunters MAX.

Advanced Tips & Tricks

Tap the brakes, don’t hold them

Hold the brakes too long, and it activates a harsh ABS system. The wheels lock up, the car goes dead straight, and there’s usually a wall waiting for you.

A quick tap (or two) does the job, or just throw the car left and right to scrub off speed without ever straightening up. If all else fails, you’ve got the (weak) handbrake. Unless you’re on your mobile.

Try to get in front (or hang back) and drift alone when you’re saving up

The rivals are great company until they wreck your big-money run. When you’ve got your eye on a particular car, let the pack go and drift on your own (although someone will probably come knocking on your door outta nowhere).

You can replay finished levels for extra cash, too. Just pop back to the main menu now and then, because that’s the only place you’ll get to see your current balance.

Watch out when the scenery changes

You’ll get used to each level being longer than the last, but when the scenery changes you’ll suddenly find yourself back on a (very) short track. Every new environment resets the length, and beyond level 20, that leaves only a few corners to fight through from the back.

Keep an eye on your position, especially if you’re still rocking the S15 (although we’d recommend upgrading at that point).

Drift Car: 40 Levels FAQ