Burnout Drift

Summary

Burnout Drift is one of the true OGs of browser drifting games, letting you slide an unusual selection of rides across three wildly different tracks. Your best sideways runs earn the cash needed to unlock each car’s potential with visual and performance upgrades.

You’ll need to tackle the insanely steep climbs of Night Desert (or dodge heavy machinery at Port) while keeping the car sideways, building the longest chains you can, and banking your score and cash before the timer expires. A hard crash wipes your current chain, but lighter wall scrapes are (thankfully) more tolerated.

Cash buys engine, handling, and brake upgrades for each car, while tuning is completely free from the start. You can tweak camber, spring force, ride height, and damping. You’ve then got the option to add paint, wheels, vinyls, underglow, colored smoke, wings (and even a police light bar, if that’s your thing) to build your dream drifter.

Port gives beginners space to learn the ropes, Rocky Pass steps things up with sweeping forest corners, and Night Desert brings the toughest challenge. You’ll need more power and smart shifting to stay sideways over its steep climbs.

It’s ideal for players who want to take a fairly basic stock car and gradually turn it into the ultimate drift build without a huge grind. It might look simple in the screenshots, but once you feel the body roll, learn how the grip behaves, and start linking the steeper sections, you’ll see why Burnout Drift still stands out among the best browser drifting games.

Features

• Release date – April 2017
• Difficulty – Beginner/Intermediate
• Levels – 3 environments
• Number of vehicles – 6
• Vehicle customization/upgrades – Yes
• Multiplayer – No
• Mobile – No usable touchscreen controls
• Developer – BoneCracker Games

Physics

It opts for a sim-cade vibe rather than going full simulator, which makes it a good mix of fun while still requiring you to pull out all your best tricks to avoid crashing or losing power.

While the cars generally feel more “slidey” than grippy, the tires can suddenly grip up and snap the underpowered starter straight in the middle of a slide, so long chains still need careful countersteer and momentum. For those of you who prefer sim drifting, our Assetto Corsa drift car guide will help you pick the ideal car, but you won’t be able to play it in your browser, unfortunately.

The larger (rarely seen) American cars also roll and shift their weight around as you’d expect in standard form. Lowering and stiffening the suspension calms the movement down and makes the response much sharper. I wouldn’t recommend tightening it too much, as it’s fun to leave some of the softness that gives the old muscle cars a satisfying sense of weight, especially when you’re tackling the elevation.

If you’ve enjoyed this one, Drift Hunters MAX takes things to the next level, with stunning graphics, arguably the best physics (from your browser, at least), 39 (more well-known) cars, 13 tracks, and a variety of game modes including Drift Attack, where you’ve got AI judging based on timers and clipping points. If you do well enough, you might even get onto the global leaderboards.

Graphics

Visually, the game clearly comes from the older era of browser games, but it still looks cool and has some welcome features.

Port’s cranes, Rocky Pass’s forest, and Night Desert’s mountain roads make the three locations easy to tell apart, while the constant exhaust flames add a welcome touch.

Damage soon becomes more noticeable. Repeated heavy crashes leave larger marks and can send the doors swinging open, while cinematic, bonnet, rear-quarter, and limited in-car cameras give you several ways to watch the end-of-run replay.

The damage isn’t quite to the extent of the craziness in Deadly Descent, where literally everything falls off your car, but it’s still highly enjoyable.

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
• C – Change camera
• Left Shift – Shift up
• Left Ctrl – Shift down
• I – Toggle ignition
• L/K – Low/high-beam headlights

It’s awesome to see the semi-automatic gearbox, so you can shift up and down without worrying about managing the clutch. Downshifting helps lower-powered cars keep the wheels spinning on the steeper climbs, while an upshift stops the engine bouncing off the limiter.

If you want another old-school drifter with a manual gearbox, Drift Race Simulator makes manual shifting compulsory and wraps it in much tougher physics along with a sick selection of 90s JDM cars.

Mobile/tablet (iOS/Android)

While the game does load in mobile browsers, it doesn’t provide usable touchscreen controls, unfortunately. The good news is that our mobile games section offers plenty of other touch-friendly alternatives.

Drift Rush is a similar game that provides mobile support, but with 12 tracks and wall-proximity zones that reward getting close without making contact.

How to Play Burnout Drift

Initial Setup

The Mustang II-style free starter car is shown on the main menu with Speed, Handling, and Brake stats in the top-left.

The settings cogwheel sits just above them (and is easy to miss), letting you adjust music and sound volume separately. You can also change between low, medium, and high texture quality, and reduce the draw distance for lower-spec computers.

Current cash and diamonds begin at zero in the top-right, while the surrounding icons open the upgrades, setup, and cosmetic options.

Getting Started

All three tracks are unlocked immediately. Pick one, begin the run, and the timer and current earnings appear on the left.

There’s no races or opponents – the only goal is to keep the car sideways, the rear wheels spinning (without crashing), and extend each drift chain before the timer expires.

A heavy crash wipes out the current chain and its cash, but brushing walls and shipping containers isn’t usually penalized (just try not to smash into them). Driving straight into a crane leg tends to settle the argument immediately, and since there’s no wall-run bonuses, getting close is smarter than aiming for the barrier.

Long corners and elevation changes can drain the starter car’s momentum (pre-upgrade), while a sudden burst of grip can sometimes fire it toward the outside of the bend. A little patience (and engine upgrades) can make a huge difference.

Keep checking the countdown once a chain starts paying well. When time is nearly up, bank the points instead of throwing everything away on one final hero move. The option to watch your replay (rare for a browser game) appears afterward. During the game, ‘C’ cycles through the cameras, some of which are awesome, although they do occasionally reset themselves.

Tracks

You can play the tracks in any order, but we recommend this as the natural learning route:

• Port – This classic browser-game shipping yard surrounds you with containers, cranes, and heavy machinery, but the open ground leaves enough room to learn the physics and earn your first upgrades.
• Rocky Pass – Sweeping forest corners and moderate elevation require better speed control. Carry too much momentum and the outside barrier arrives alarmingly quickly.
• Night Desert – The ridiculous gradients turn the dark mountain road into the closest thing here to a proper touge run. The starter car struggles massively uphill here, but extra engine power (from upgrades) and smart downshifts soon transform it into a strong cash route.

Night Desert surprised me most once the car could sustain the wheelspin on the climbs. The uphill sections naturally limit the speed that causes so much trouble on Rocky Pass, and a solid run with basic upgrades can bring in around $20,000 early on. Just avoid slamming the suspension too far before attempting a tofu delivery, especially since the El Camino isn’t quite as nimble as Takumi’s AE86!

Car List

While the garage is small, it at least provides a different roster to what we’re used to seeing (well, BMW 3 Series’ aside, anyway).

• 1970s Ford Mustang II-style car – Free starter
• Yugo GV-style hatchback – $20,000
• Lincoln Town Car-style sedan – $25,000
• Chevrolet El Camino-style pickup – $35,000
• BMW E36 M3 – 1 diamond
• BMW E46 M3 – 2 diamonds

Where else are you going to find a Yugo hatchback, Lincoln Town Car, and El Camino in the same drift garage?

The diamond-locked E36 gives Chelsea DeNofa fans something more familiar to chase, although the diamond-earning process remains a mystery to us.

Upgrades & Customization

Upgrades

Open the engine-shaped icon on the menu (the one you dread seeing on a real-world dashboard) for engine power, steering/handling, and brake upgrades. Each category has five levels, and every level costs $2,000.

Engine power is easily the best first purchase. The starter bogs down on hills, so more power makes longer chains possible almost immediately. Upgrades belong to the current car and don’t transfer, though, leaving you to decide when another $2,000 tier is less useful than saving for the ride you really want.

Tuning

All tuning is free, including separate front and rear camber, spring force, ride height, and damping. Lowering and stiffening the suspension reduce body movement, while some softness lets the big American rides throw their weight around.

The labels don’t help. ‘Front Suspensions’ and ‘Rear Suspensions’ control the ride height, while moving the camber slider toward positive adds negative camber (yes, really). So, trust the visual wheel angle rather than the number.

There’s no offset slider, although camber and ride height still give you plenty of room to experiment with stanced-car fitment. Go too low, though, and the wheels can clip through the fenders or the car can bottom out on Night Desert.

If the tuning here leaves you wanting much more, Force Drift Racing: Aussie Burnout adds much more, including tire compounds, forced induction upgrades, differential lock adjustments, final-drive gearing, and detailed damper control across a 23-car garage.

Visual Customization

You can start changing the look without spending anything, since the orange, white, and black paint jobs are free. Six other premium body colors cost $1,000 each, seven wheel choices cost $1,500, and RGB sliders let you create exact headlight and tire-smoke colors.

Confusingly, the spray-can icon actually opens vinyls rather than paint. You can apply separate $5,000 designs to each side, then add underglow, choose from 14 wings, or stick a police lightbar on the roof.

Be careful when you’re looking through these, since clicking an item immediately buys and equips it without any preview or confirmation. The (uselessly) identical wing thumbnails are particularly dangerous for your bank balance, making power a far better early investment than an accidental spoiler (even if it looks pretty damn awesome).

If the underglow starts giving you bigger ideas, UNBOUNDED takes the night drifting vibes of Night Desert into a stunning rain-soaked city with a huge selection of mods, aero parts, and online lobbies where you can cruise or drift in tandems with the homies.

Advanced Tips and Tricks

Shift down to keep the rear wheels spinning on steep climbs

Downshift (left Ctrl key) when the revs fall and the car begins struggling uphill, especially on Night Desert. Shift up (left Shift key) when the engine sits on the limiter.

The goal isn’t constant gear changing, but keeping enough wheelspin to stop the combo fading away, and enough grip to stop you smashing into everything.

Judge the grip before you go running walls like Nakamura at Meihan

Countersteer as the rear steps out, then watch for the moment the tires begin to grip again. The starter car often snaps straight without much warning, so deliberate wall runs are rarely worth attempting until you’ve got enough upgrades and the physics feel familiar.

If you could do with brushing up your skills, our how to drift guide explains everything you need to know about countersteer, grip, and weight transfer in more depth. Those fundamentals help far more here than relying on the handbrake for every corner.

Don’t lose your hard-earned combo right at the end

Keep checking the countdown during a strong run. When only a little time remains, move away from cranes and outside barriers, finish the current slide cleanly, and secure the cash rather than gambling everything on one final heroic entry, or you’ll likely lose it all.

Burnout Drift FAQ