Simple but Fun: Trackmania

I didn’t always appreciate racing games. I didn’t like cars, and I found the concept of sim-driving even less intriguing. This rejection of the racing genre has completely vanished over the years. Even though I am not a car enthusiast yet and also not that good in racing games alltogether, I have newfound interest in all sorts different car games. I learned to enjoy simulations, like Gran Turismo, and I always loved destruction which BeamNG Drive and the FlatOut series offer in spades. What about simple racing? I enjoy Need For Speed Most Wanted and Midnight Club 3 for that.

Yet one game I came to know about seven or eight years ago, trumped every other racing game I have ever played in regards to simplicity, content and fun factor. This game is Simple but Fun: Trackmania, a game that got much more going for it than one might expect.

What is so simple about this game?

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The main premise of the series mainly revolves around completing short time trials to win medals. You can earn anything from bronze to gold and if you are exceptionally good, the secret green medal.

The core of the series never changed, yet it does have a surprising amount of variety. The variety of Trackmania mainly comes with the different environments of the games. Every environment requires the player to think differently and in turn race differently. Stadium is rather straight forward and requires the player to avoid obstacles and drift if nescessary, however Island is solely speed focused. One environment that feels like the odd one out is Coast. Except of the rest of the series, Coast tries to be a tad more realistic with slower accelleration and requiring the player to think about skidding, drifting and deaccelleration. There are quite a few more environments for the rest of the series and all try to do something a bit differently to stand out.

The controls are just as simple as the premise. All you need are the arrow keys, backspace to reset the level and that is pretty much it. It is very easy for players to pick up the game. It is even easier to keep playing the game due to online play and local multiplayer.

Trackmanias Hook

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Simple doesn’t nescessarily mean easy. The challenges in the singleplayer campaign keep getting harder and harder, and the player has to learn the physics of how the race cars handle in the different environments. Drifting, air controls and knowing when to slow down come into mind. Earlier levels mostly do not require those skills, but the more you play, the harder it gets.

The controls only scratch the surface of why Trackmania is so intriguing though. A lot of players are especially invested in competing against other players in the rankings. For instance, In Trackmania Nations Forever and Trackmania United, players can compete for the best times in any given map, but they only have one attempt at recording a score that is free of charge. When a player wants to improve a previously recorded time, they have to pay a certain amount of in game currency to retry. This certainly emphasizes the importance of perfecting and improving your scores. This way the game makes sure to tickle the best out of its players. Well, for the ones who care anyway, since all of this is merely optional. But what if you wanted to play Trackmania forever? You can and that is because Nadeo did something many other developers don’t.

The emphasis on Modding

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If there is a single word to describe Trackmania regarding its openness for modding, it would be sensational. Anything from custom car models, tracks, paints and even something as mundane as the car honk, are customizeable.

I am not sure about the older games, but Trackmania 2, Nations Forever and United feature a commendable amount of modding resources inside of the games. It even is possible for other players to hear and see differently modelled racecars in the game, even though the players didn’t download these cars themselves. Trackmania United Forever still is the racing game with the most user created content out there. Most content was created for the free version of the game, Trackmania Nations Forever. Content creation doesn’t seem to slow down either, with more maps being made, more cars being painted, and more videos being created with the in-game demo editor.