Nebula Racer

Nebula Racer drops you on a strip of neon deck floating in open space, with a nebula rolling past behind it and glowing rails running down both edges. The track is drawn segment by segment as it rushes at you, so every crest, dip and sweeping bend has real weight. Your ship hovers rather than grips: ask for a corner early, let the nose settle, and ride the outside of the bank until the exit opens up. Five rival ships line up with you — Vex, Quill, Sable, Orbit and Hark — and they close up whenever you pull away.

Speed is something you collect. Chevron pads laid on the exit of most corners hand it over straight away. Drift gates — neon hoops standing on the deck — pay a small bonus for a clean pass and a much bigger one if you go through sideways, so the fastest line is the one that has you leaning hard at the right moment. A clean lap with no wall scrapes fills the boost meter on its own, and one press spends it for a hard shove down the next straight. Asteroids and hazard barriers sit on the racing line to make you think, and the walls will take a bite out of your speed if you lean on them.

Four worlds, each with its own colour and its own character: Violet Veil is long sweepers through a purple nebula, Ice Rings is fast and wide under frozen rings, Ember Belt piles on hills and rocks, and Emerald Cloud twists tight all the way round. Take any of them as a quick race over three laps, run a Time Trial against the ghost of your own best lap, or play the Championship across all four tracks where points are awarded after every race and your best points total is kept as a high score. Best lap times are saved per track on your own device. Arrows or A and D steer, Space boosts; on a phone you hold the left or right half of the screen and the throttle looks after itself.