MiniCars

Minicars is a top-down racing game with fifteen different tracks. The player's car is controlled through mouse click-and-drag; it accelerates towards the cursor when the button is pressed.

For the most part, each track is unlocked one at a time when the player finishes in the top three in the preceding track among a field of five other cars, AI-controlled, with varying degrees of speed. The exception lies in the last three tracks, which require a number of gold trophies to unlock.

The other cars in the race are actually faster than your car, so your sole advantage lies in your ability to drive efficiently around curves and use power-ups, which AI cars can't use. Mostly these power-ups are speed boosts, which may be a permanent feature of the track or appear randomly along its length, but there are also randomly appearing "electric weapon" power-ups on some levels that disable other cars when you crash into them. On some levels there are even hidden teleportation portals that can shortcut you ahead of the competition, albeit a bit disoriented.

While the game element itself is fine, the menu interface needs work. There is no instruction or help given, there are no customization options other than audio, the high scores are hard to interpret, and the icons for each level are unnecessarily tiny and lack a preview of the track.

Sam's Protip: Take the time to explore the level surroundings if you're having trouble finishing first. It may not be possible without the help of teleportation.