Drift City

Drift City summary

If you like plenty of content, great graphics and physics, a huge selection of challenges and things to do, and near-unlimited tuning potential in your drifting games, this is one you definitely need to try.

Drift City offers a selection of in-depth game modes, including a career mode where you’ll need to combine your drifting and driving skills. Your grip racing abilities will earn you extra rewards if you reach the checkpoints early enough, making this more than just another typical street drifting browser game.

Once you start playing, you’ll quickly see why this is becoming one of the most popular games in the Drifted arcade!

Controls

PC/Laptop/Chromebook

• W/Up arrow key – Accelerate
• A/Left arrow key – Turn left
• D/Right arrow key – Turn right
• S/Down arrow key – Reverse
• Space bar – Handbrake/e-brake
• C key – Toggle camera view
• Y key – Advanced telemetry

Mobile

• Press the buttons on the touchscreen overlay

If you’d rather switch to a wheel-style layout on mobile instead of the default left/right steering buttons, head to Settings in the main menu, or quickly change them in the in-game pause menu. From there, choose between ‘Arrow’ (default) or ‘Steer’ (wheel) steering layout.

How to play Drift City

Initial setup

First, head to Settings in the main menu and set your desired music volume.

Here, mobile gamers can also adjust the steering controls with ‘Arrow’ or ‘Steer’ (wheel) options. PC/laptop/Chromebook users will use the keyboard layout.

Under ‘Other settings’, you can adjust the language and toggle between mph and kmh.

With these set to your preferences, you can head back to the main menu.

Getting started

If you’d like additional tips on mastering Drift City, head to the ‘Advanced tips & tricks’ section at the bottom of this page.

For now, let’s dive into the basics:

Choosing your car

You’ll start with two cars, 25,000 cash, and 5 tuning cards to spend on upgrades.

It’s recommended to spend the money upgrading your car initially while you save up for your dream ride, as it’ll make drifting much easier once you have more power and grip to play with.

Once you’ve built up some savings, there’s a huge car selection on offer:

From JDM legends and the best of the golden era.

To a drifting Hummer.

Or an old-school classic.

And even modern-day supercars.

Game Modes

Once you complete all of the following challenges, the level finishes automatically.

Crash mode

This is similar to Gymkhana, but with extra stunts and crashes thrown in. You have to navigate through various obstacles and smash the bricks (shown with a target) within the time limit displayed at the top of the screen.

Each target is highlighted in yellow, which disappears once smashed. If you miss a target, you’ll need to go back and ensure it’s destroyed before moving on.

You can earn maximum points and combos if you combine drifting with getting to the finish as quickly as possible.

Once all the targets are smashed, the FINISH screen will appear.

Crash mode rewards

• Level reward – Standard reward for completing the level
• Time reward – Bonus score based on how quickly you smashed all the targets
• Drift reward – Bonus points for tail-happy action along the way
• All cash – The total of the above

Career mode

Drift City’s career mode features three seasons, and you can advance to the next season (which is locked initially) once you’ve finished all the events in the current one.

Each season offers a variety of events, and they display the objective before you get started. For easy money earning, you can repeat the levels, but it’s important to note that you’ll only unlock the bonus card the first time.

Classic drift

In this mode, you’re under a time limit, and you’ll need to achieve a certain number of points from high-speed drifts without straightening or crashing, as shown in the initial reward menu.

Perfect drift

This is similar to Classic drift, but this time, you’re rewarded for holding long, high-speed drifts and big angles, but you’re only allowed a certain number of crashes.

As you likely guessed, the angles get bigger, speed gets higher, and allowed crashes get lower as you progress through the career.

Flag capture

You have to collect all the ‘flags’, but these are just highlighted zones you need to drive through on the map within the time limit.

You’ll earn extra bonuses and rewards for showing off your drifting skills along the way.

Free run mode

Unlike most free-roam modes you find in browser games, Drift City lets you choose from a variety of missions while you cruise and drift around multiple locations.

First, choose where you want to drift from the track list (below).

Once you’ve found the perfect location, check out the radar in the top left of the screen, which shows you where the missions are.

These missions are the same as the ones found in Career mode, but instead of having to go back to the main menu each time, you can keep drifting and earning cash endlessly in free roam, making it perfect for grinding!

Port City – This is a busy port where you’ll need to drift through containers, vehicles, and plenty of traffic. Watch out for those buses.

Snow City – If you’re struggling to get your car sideways at the beginning, this snow-level track is the perfect place to break traction and quickly earn cash easily. The lack of grip makes it ideal for beginners.

Province – This starts on the streets but also incorporates a huge stunt arena if you want to throw your drift car off some massive ramps.

Business City – Drive through a busy city with plenty of traffic, innocently heading to work on their morning commute. Navigate around buses and cars while racking up drift points.

Rewards & bonus offers

Daily rewards – Each day you return to Drift City, you’re gifted with free rewards from cash to cards and loot boxes.

Loot box – You never know what you’ll get until you open your loot box, but it offers a mix of bonus prizes. You can open them several times each day based on the countdown timer. The silver box tops up far quicker than the gold loot box.

Tuning, customization & upgrades

Customization

This is where you can tweak the styling of your ride, and just like Drift Hunters MAX, there’s a huge variety on offer.

The number above each option refers to how many tuning cards you have, which determines how many changes you can make. You can get more tuning cards by completing tasks and challenges, or from daily rewards and loot boxes.

Here’s what each customization option does:

Painting

Choose from Body or Caliper in just about every color in the rainbow. Make sure you scroll left and right to view all the options.

• Body changes the paint on the car
• Caliper changes the color of your brake calipers (behind the wheels)

Livery

Like real-world pro competition cars you’ve seen in Formula DRIFT, you can choose from a variety of fun pre-made wild and wacky liveries to give your vehicle a unique look, with 13 designs to choose from.

Disks

This one might be a little confusing, as it actually lets you change wheels (don’t worry, we’re not painting the brake disks!). There are 14 different wheel designs to choose from, from classic options to deep-dish JDM-style.

Tinting

This lets you add window tints in various colors. Once you’ve picked your color, you can adjust the Saturation slider to choose the desired level.

Collapse

This lets you adjust the wheel and suspension settings. It’s another one with a slightly confusing name.

• Size – Refers to the size of your wheels. The further you drag the slider to the right, the bigger the wheels will be.
• Suspension – Lets you adjust the ride height; left (on the slider) is the slammed setting (typical for drift cars), and right is the highest if off-road ride height is your thing.
• Collapse Front/Back – Sliding these changes the camber of your drift car. A typical real-world drift car setup would have a few degrees of camber at the front and a tiny bit at the rear. Or, if you’re a stance/onikyan fan, you can opt for some wild fitment setups by playing around with these settings.

Once you’ve found the perfect camber, you might need to re-tweak the size/suspension settings again, as they might end up poking through the fenders.

Spoiler

Choose from five spoiler options.

Neon

If you fancy some Fast & Furious Tokyo Drift-style underglow, you can choose from a variety of colors.

Smoke

Change the color of your tire smoke. This can look super cool when you’re sideways, but you’ll need to warm them up for maximum smoke.

Roof

Choose from five roof scoops.

Hood

Again, five scoops on offer, but this time for your hood.

Upgrade

Where Customization allows you to change the styling of your car, Upgrade is where the real magic happens, and you can transform your drift car into a tire-slaying weapon.

When you upgrade each component, you’ll have to wait a certain amount of time for it to be fitted. At first, this is just a few seconds, but once you reach the later tuning stages, it increases to a few minutes.

Here are the upgrades on offer:

Engine

This improves your engine performance, making your drift car faster and allowing it to reach a higher top speed.

Turbine

Also known as turbo, this adds boost to increase horsepower and improve acceleration. This helps break traction more easily and maintain the drift through corners. If you’re struggling to keep your car sideways, consider making this your first upgrade (along with the Engine).

Mass

This is the gearbox/transmission, and upgrading it further helps break traction and lets you hold your drift longer.

Tires

Although tires are boring, once you’ve upgraded all the other options, you’re going to need more traction to keep the power down, or you’ll spin out. If you’re struggling to control your car, make this your next upgrade. It should handle well, not like it’s on an ice rink.

Drift City advanced tips & tricks

Mastering combos

Quickly flick side to side (manji drifting technique) to rapidly increase your combo. Don’t let the combo bar get too low, as once it empties, you’ll lose your combo multiplier and it’ll reset back to zero.

Balancing angle and speed

Big angle and high speed equals maximum points. However, too much angle will cause you to spin out or scrub off speed. Balance it right, and you’ll rack up huge scores.

Breaking traction/initiating the drift

Struggling to break traction? It gets easier as you upgrade your car with more power to the rear wheels.

To initiate the drift, quickly steer left to right, or tap the brake while steering. The e-brake doesn’t work as well as it does in other games, but when you learn how it works, you can achieve some huge angles.

The realistic physics make it trickier on grippier tarmac, but it’s easier on the snow level, where there’s less grip. Consider heading there in Free run mode until you’ve earned enough money for upgrades, then you can return to the grippier locations.

Understanding weight transfer

Weight transfer and transitioning in Drift City is very snappy, so you’ve been warned, but you’ll soon get used to it with some practice. The great graphics and realistic physics make it worth the learning curve.

If you’ve enjoyed Drift City, make sure you also check out another popular drifting game – Drift King. We bet you’ll also love Madalin Stunt Cars 3 if you enjoyed the stunts and destruction.

Alternatively, if you want a multiplayer game to enjoy with your friends, head over to Survival Race.