Moto Trials

Moto Trials is about one thing: where your weight is. The bike is a rigid frame on two sprung wheels, and everything you do goes through the rider sitting on top of it. Lean back and the front wheel lifts, the rear digs in and the bike will climb a wall of crates. Lean forward and the nose drops, the front tyre bites and a long drop stops being a crash. In the air the same two buttons rotate the whole machine, so a landing is something you set up a second before you get there. The suspension works visibly — the forks telescope, the rear shock compresses through its coil — and the throttle spins the back wheel exactly as hard as the surface under it allows. Painted wood holds; wet sawdust does not; a steel container roof lets go completely.

The tracks are hand-built out of things somebody stacked in a yard. The Stone Yard is orange rock and shipping containers, with staircases of crates, loose oil barrels that roll away the moment you touch them and half-buried pipes to bounce over. The Lumber Yard is sawdust underfoot, planks balanced on trestles that tip as you cross the middle, stacked timber to climb and a green pond you get over by riding a raft of floating logs that turn under the tyres. The Circus Back-Lot is striped canvas, bouncy tyres sunk into the sand, platforms swinging on ropes over a drop, and a cannon that fires you the length of the lot — hold the nose up on the way out and drop it again before the landing. Thirty tracks in all, ten to a yard, each one twenty seconds to a minute and a half depending on how long it takes you to stop crashing.

A run is timed from the gate to the chequered flag, and the helmet touching anything at all sends you back to the last checkpoint with the clock still running. Gold needs the target time and a clean run; silver allows a couple of falls; bronze just wants you to finish. A backflip or a frontflip off a big kicker takes a little time off the total, so the fastest line and the showiest line are not always the same one. Every track keeps your best time and a translucent ghost of that run, which rides beside you the next time you try to beat it. Arrow keys or WASD, R to restart, P to pause, M to mute; on a phone there are lean buttons under your left thumb and throttle and brake under your right. Times, medals and ghosts are stored on your own device.