Deskdrift
A lap across your desk. Twenty seconds, then again.
No sign-up, nothing to install. R restarts, instantly.
What a lap is like
One lap takes twenty to sixty seconds. Straights, corners, ramps and berms are laid out across the desk, and the desk itself is part of the road: a book is a slippery shortcut, a ruler is a fast lane, a mat drags you down, a mug stops you dead.
Leaving the road is a recovery rather than a death. Put the car back on the last checkpoint it crossed and keep going; drive off the desk entirely and it puts itself back. Nothing ends the run but the finish line and your own patience.
A time reaches a track’s board only when the server can reproduce it by re-running the inputs that set it. That is what stands in for an account: nothing is asked of you until you have a time worth putting up, and then only a name.
How to play
Keyboard
- Arrow keys or WASD
- Up throttles, down brakes, left and right steer.
- Enter or Space
- Puts the car back on the last checkpoint it crossed.
- R or Backspace
- Restarts the run.
- [ and ]
- Change track.
- B
- Opens the track builder. It needs a mouse, so it is offered on a computer only.
- M
- Mutes the sound.
Touch
Touch the desk anywhere and the car drives. Slide left and right to steer — how far you slide is how hard it turns. Pull your thumb down from where it landed and the car eases off, then brakes, then backs up; slide back up to speed up again. Let go to coast. Buttons along the bottom put the car back and restart the run.
The tracks
18 tracks ship with the game, from a first corner to a desk-long tour, and each one has its own board.
- Learning the desk
- Desk Dash, Kerb Turn, Mat Brake, Ramp Step
- Once you can drive
- Book Cut, Hairpin, Mug Slalom, Stair Climb, Berm Circuit, The Long Way
- When you want a fight
- High Road, Plunge, Switchback, Sheer Drop, Grand Tour, Corkscrew, Kicker Row, Overpass
Build your own
The same pieces the official tracks are made of are yours to lay out. Build a track on the desk, drive it until it is worth other people’s time, then publish it: it gets a board of its own and a link you can send to anybody.