Racing Horizon

Summary

Racing Horizon puts you on a selection of busy roads (not just highways) where you’ll need to drive as fast as you can, thread gaps between the innocent traffic on their daily commute, and string near misses into combos.

Unlike most typical highway racing games, the roads often bend rather than running dead straight, so it’s not as easy to see cleanly up ahead which can often catch you out. A generous amount of nitro is there to help get you moving again when you need to slam on the brakes, while a scrape that barely matters at low speed will instantly end your run when you’re blasting past at 200km/h.

You’ve got several game modes, where Missions give you specific objectives, Endless lets you choose the traffic, weather, time, and location, and Time Up is a quick distance challenge. Escape is the most intense option, where you’ve got police cars blocking the lane up ahead, hitting the anchors in front of you, and doing everything they can to ram you into other cars and surroundings.

Your earnings go towards a garage of unlicensed cars to unlock, repaint, and upgrade. It feels like a (slightly) calmer, four-wheeled Traffic Road, swapping the motorbike chaos for a more straightforward drive and a bit of garage progression. It has its quirks (there’s a few bugs you’ll likely spot), but it’s a fun choice for when you fancy a few high-speed runs through traffic.

Features

• Release date – October 26, 2022
• Difficulty – Beginner/Intermediate
• Levels/environments – 15 missions (3 endless locations)
• Number of vehicles – 7
• Vehicle customization/upgrades – Yes
• Multiplayer – No
• Mobile – No
• Developer – RHM Interactive

Physics

Although the roads aren’t straight, your car will automatically follow each bend, so you just need to focus on moving between lanes without crashing rather than steering through proper corners as you would in typical racing games. Given that you’re often driving at a slight angle, it makes it a little harder than when the gaps are opening up neatly in front of you.

When (not if) you collide with another car a slow scrape or gentle rear-end bump is often fine, but doing a near-identical move at high speed often ends the run instantly.

Be warned that the brakes need plenty of room when you’re pushing the needle, even if you’ve got them fully upgraded, so you’ll need to think ahead at all times. If the instant game overs get old, Crazy Traffic Racer lets you take on more damage while keeping the same near-miss scoring and nitrous-fueled traffic dodging you’ll find here, and you even get a twitchy rear end.

There’s absolutely no drifting in this one, and the Space bar definitely doesn’t act like your typical drift-ready hydro/e-brake. It kicks the car into a skid and scrubs off speed (which is great for slowing down quickly), but you won’t come to a complete stop, or kick the back end out to change direction quickly. If that’s what you were hoping for, look no further than Drift Hunters MAX, which gives you actual drift modes, counter-steering, transitions, and way more to tune. There’s a reason it’s the most popular drifting game at Drifted.

While the handling is decent, the body roll (especially on the SUVs) is often amusing and dealing with the weight shifting gives you something else to juggle (as if their chonky size wasn’t enough to think about!).

Graphics

While it’s not the most incredible-looking game, it’s better than most quick browser racers. You can opt for low, medium, and high graphics to make the most of the visuals or make it run smoother on your device.

Make sure you play around with the camera angles. You can switch between an in-car cockpit view, an angled follow cam, and a normal chase view. The cockpit gives a great first-person perspective and makes the speed feel a lot more convincing.

As you play, you’ll likely notice that the game does get a bit wonky in places. Roads sometimes randomly disappear where you’ll fall through the map, and the cars can randomly decide they’d rather be an aircraft after a crash. Thankfully, a restart normally sorts it out, but it’s not ideal.

Controls

PC/laptop/Chromebook

• W/Up arrow – Accelerate
• S/Down arrow – Brake/reverse
• A/Left arrow – Steer left
• D/Right arrow – Steer right
• Space bar – Emergency brake/skid
• N – Nitro
• C – Change camera
• Mouse – Menus and on-screen pause

The usual Esc and P keys don’t pause the action, so it seems you need to click the on-screen pause button instead.

Mobile (iOS/Android)

Racing Horizon isn’t playable on portable devices, but we’ve got a huge selection of mobile games if you want something optimized for your phone or tablet.

How to Play Racing Horizon

Initial Setup

Right at the start, the game drops you onto a snowy highway for a test drive in the Super Coupe S4 (aka M4) to learn the ropes, then swaps it for your free starter Scirocco once you’ve reached the finish and collected the opening reward.

When you eventually get to the menu, you can tweak the graphics and audio settings, check out the garage/showroom and tuning options, then open Start and pick a game mode (more on each of them below).

Getting Started

Your speed and timer sit at the top right, with score and distance over on the left. Driving quickly triggers “High Speed” bonuses (left side), and passing close to vehicles lets you build up the “Overtake Combo”.

When you start racking up points, don’t get too excited and expect your score to translate into money for new cars. A run worth around 50,000 points only paid roughly 1,000 coins (unfortunately) so it does take a decent amount of grinding to get the better vehicles.

Keep your eyes on the traffic, not the counter. You’ll soon notice patterns in the vehicles, where pickups sometimes wander across two lanes, and cars sitting side by side can end up making it impossible to get past.

Two-way traffic is riskier, but slipping between an oncoming car and a moving one can hand you two Overtake Combos instantly. If the gap disappears, wait for another one, but don’t leave it too long or the combo will reset.

Ads can help unlock certain cars, add coins after a run, or provide a Continue when you crash (for 3,000).

Game Modes

Missions

These take you through 15 unique objectives that gradually get trickier. Early tasks include reaching the finish within 60 seconds and collecting five close-pass combos within 40 seconds. Make sure you read the popup prompt immediately as you can’t check again once it disappears, and some of the instructions aren’t super clear.

In the main menu, “My Map” displays the same stage progression as Missions, but nothing happened when I clicked the stages, which seems to be a bug. To get around this, just open Start, then Missions.

The generous opening reward makes this mode look like a quick route to riches, but then the payouts shrink massively, so it’s back to grinding! 

Endless

This is the typical highway racer mode where you go to chase a score without worrying about anything else.

Choose one-way or two-way traffic, day or night, Fine, Rainy, Snow, or Fog weather, then City, Snow, or Desert, all of which are available at the start. A funky-sounding “Space” level appears in the location menu too, but the “Coming Soon” label is doing all the work there, and we’re not too confident we’ll be seeing it anytime soon.

Fog cuts the view at speed, City splits the carriageways around trees and barriers, and Desert gives you a more familiar four-lane road. If you like the setup but want more than Racing Horizon offers, Racing Limits keeps the same concept but adds a superior career mode, real-time multiplayer, and much deeper tuning. It’s easy to see why it’s become one of the most popular highway racing games

Time Up

Here, you get 90 seconds to cover as much distance as possible. There’s no mission brief to worry about, so keep your speed as high as possible and do your best to avoid getting trapped behind slower traffic. Pick this when you fancy a fast-hitting attempt rather than a longer Endless run.

Escape

This police escape is the most unique of the four. You need to stay above 100 km/h while a bar shows how close the police are to catching you.

Their cars appear ahead, change lanes, brake-check, block gaps, and will happily pull off a PIT maneuver into the oncoming traffic. They’re absolutely relentless. When they knock your speed down, nitro is the quickest way to get back above the limit before the bar empties.

Stick with the chase for long enough and they’ll call for backup, where you’ll need to try and outrun a helicopter. If weaving through roadblocks and outrunning the cops is the bit that gets you grinning, we’ve got plenty more police games to check out.

Car List

None of the cars are licensed, but you’ll notice they’re clearly “influenced” by the VW Scirocco, Mercedes-Benz C63 AMG Coupe, BMW M3 Coupe, Nissan Skyline GT-R R34, BMW M4, Range Rover Evoque, and Range Rover Sport. Here’s what they’re called in the garage:

• Starter car – Free starter car
• S Coupe – 75,000 coins (or seven ads)
• Coupe 92 – 150,000 coins
• GT-32 – 300,000 coins (or ten ads)
• Super Coupe S4 – 250,000 coins
• SUV S – 500,000 coins
• SUV B – 1,000,000 coins

You naturally expect an exotic supercar to cap the collection, but nope, it’s two SUVs here. SUV B is fast and changes lanes well once it’s upgraded, but the body roll (even with handling maxed out) is… questionable.

It’ll take a long time to unlock all of these with the typical payouts. If you’d rather skip the grind, Madalin Stunt Cars 3 hands over a selection of over 60 cars immediately and lets you mess around on huge stunt maps with other players in online multiplayer lobbies.

Tuning, Upgrades & Customization

Tuning is super simple (but also pretty limited). Every car gets the same four options:

• Chip Tuning – 2,000 coins per tier, up to Stage 3.
• Brake Level – 1,500 coins per tier, up to Version 3.
• Handling Level – 1,000 coins per tier, from Base Stage through Air Stage to Top Stage.
• Paint – 100 coins (for one of six basic colors)

The price stays the same each time you improve a part. Paint only changes the color, but black changes absolutely everything on the car to black. Stealth mode, perhaps? More likely another lil’ bug.

Fancy something a bit more varied, with much more to change under the hood and on the body? Top Speed Racing 3D gives you an open world, proper drifting, and much more.

Advanced Tips & Tricks

Use the outside barrier when traffic leaves you with nowhere else to go

Traffic contact at high speed ends your run, but you’ll be fine if you go full lock on the steering wheel and slam into the barriers.

So, when you spot a gap several lanes away, go full lock and use the whole road to avoid a collision without worrying. It feels cheeky, but it works!

Choose two-way traffic when you want to build combos (and cash) faster

Oncoming lanes create much higher danger and risk, but also offer way more close-pass opportunities. A narrow gap between vehicles traveling in opposite directions triggers two overtake combo multipliers. Don’t chase every gap, though, as trying to squeeze past a pickup straddling two lanes rarely ends well!

Save nitro for the moment something forces you to slow down

Save your (limited) nitro for time when you need to hit the brakes, squeeze through a gap at the last second, or avoid a hit from the police. It’s especially useful in Escape, where dropping below the required speed lets the pressure bar run down.

Racing Horizon FAQ