Ridge Rally

Two pedals, a soft-sprung buggy and hills that never stop coming

2 player, one device
racing
physics
2 player

▶ Play Ridge Rally Loads here in the page. No download, no account.

Prefer it full screen? Open Ridge Rally on its own.

About Ridge Rally

A buggy, a driver with a fragile head, and a landscape built from four overlapping waves — one long roll seventy metres from crest to crest, then smaller ripples laid over it. The ground is never flat and never quite repeats. Fuel drains one second per second and there is nothing to do about it except keep moving toward the next can.

The car has a proper suspension model rather than a wobble effect. Long travel, soft springs, and compression damped noticeably harder than rebound, so a big landing swallows the impact and then springs back through a couple of overshoots. Traction is tied to how hard each wheel is pressing into the dirt, which is why the throttle bites over a dip and spins uselessly over a crest.

Two people can take turns on the same phone. Both runs use the same hills, the same fuel and the same seed, and during the second run a marker post stands at the distance the first player reached.

What is different about this version

There is no jump, no boost and no nitro, and the air control is the reason none of them is missed. Rotation in mid-air is a torque toward a target rate rather than a nudge, so a quick tap bites the same whether you are ten centimetres off the ground or twenty metres up, and the buggy keeps rotating for a moment after you let go. The chassis carries a real roll hoop in its collision hull, so a buggy that lands upside down rests on the hoop with the driver's head clear, which turns a certain crash into a recoverable one if you can rock it back over. The difficulty setting does not just add bumps either — it changes gravity, fuel, how far apart the cans sit, and how close the driver's head can come to the ground before it counts.

How to play Ridge Rally

Choose Solo Run or 2 Players from the pause sheet, plus Easy, Normal or Hard.
Hold gas to climb, brake to slow. Keep holding brake past a standstill and the buggy reverses.
With no wheel on the ground, gas rotates the nose up and brake rotates it down. That is how you land level.
Drive over fuel cans for eighteen seconds each. They sit in the dips, never on the peaks.
A run ends when the driver's head touches the dirt, when the buggy rests upside down, or when the fuel runs out.
In two-player, player one runs first and player two then drives the identical course; the longer distance wins.

Controls

Desktop	Right arrow, D, up arrow or W for gas; left arrow, A, down arrow or S for brake and reverse.
Phone or tablet	Two large pedals sit in the bottom corners — brake on the left, gas on the right.
Players	One or two people on the same device. Nothing here plays over the internet.

Strategy

Throttle control is the whole game and it is counterintuitive. The tyres can only push as hard as they are being pressed down, so the moment the suspension unloads — cresting a rise, or halfway through the rebound after a landing — full gas produces wheelspin and nothing else. Ease off just before the top of a climb and squeeze back on as the nose drops and the wheels load again. Drivers who hold the pedal flat go slower up hills than drivers who feather it.

In the air, rotate early and gently. The target rate is quick enough that a long hold spins the buggy past level, and because the rotation persists briefly after release you have to stop the input before you are lined up rather than when you are. Aim to land a shade nose-down into a slope instead of flat onto it; the compression damping swallows that cleanly, whereas a flat landing on a rising face throws the tail up and puts the driver's head where it should not be.

Fuel is a distance budget, not a timer. Cans are dropped at the lowest point the game can find nearby, so the route that feels wasteful — dipping into every valley rather than skipping the tops — is the one that keeps you alive. Braking hard to stay in a dip and collect a can beats carrying speed over it, since eighteen seconds is worth more than the momentum you give up.

Mistakes that cost you the game

Holding gas flat over the top of every climb. The wheels unload at the crest and spin, and you reach the descent nose-high.
Correcting rotation in the air with long presses. The spin carries on after you release.
Skipping a fuel can because the run feels like it is going well. The next one is a long way off.
Giving up the moment the buggy tips. Resting on the roll hoop is not a crash — there are two seconds to rock it back over.

Tips

Take the opening few hundred metres slowly. Distance survived beats distance covered fast, and fuel drains at the same rate either way.
Use the brake as a pitch control on descents. A dab drops the nose and keeps the front wheel searching for grip.
Land the rear wheel first on a downslope — it has more travel to give than the nose.
Behind in the second run? The marker post tells you exactly what you need, so there is no reason to gamble early.
Easy is not only gentler hills: forty seconds of fuel, closer cans and far more head clearance make it the place to learn the air control.

Questions about Ridge Rally

Do both players drive the same course?

Yes. Terrain, fuel cans and starting tank all come from one seed for the pair of runs.

How far can a single run go?

As far as the fuel stretches. Hills are generated ahead of the buggy without limit, so there is nothing to reach.

What exactly kills the driver?

The head touching the ground, or the buggy lying still and inverted for two seconds. Rolling it is not automatically fatal.

Can the tank overfill?

No. It caps at about a third above the starting amount, so a can taken while nearly full is mostly wasted.

Does it need a keyboard?

No — two pedals appear on screen as soon as you touch it.

Does it cost anything?

No. Ridge Rally is free to play, runs in your browser, and needs no download, install or account.

More games like this

See all 105 games · Read the articles