Drive Mad Throttle Control: Two Directions, No Steering

Most driving games hand you a wheel. Drive Mad hands you a throttle and nothing else. The developer's own description of the game puts it bluntly: drive silly cars at high speed over dangerous terrain, and "you can't steer." Every level in this build comes down to how much power you give the car, in which direction, and when you stop giving it.

The inputs that exist

There are only two directions in this game, and the keyboard maps several keys onto the same one:

Input	What it does
Right arrow	Drives forward
Up arrow	Drives forward (same as Right)
D	Drives forward (same as Right)
Left arrow	Drives the other way
Touch: bottom-left / bottom-right arrow buttons	Back / forward on phones and tablets
Pause button, top left	Stops the level and opens the menu

That is the whole list. There is no steering key, no restart key on the keyboard and no separate brake. If you have read guides that mention an R key or special mid-air controls, they were not written for this build. Slowing down means releasing forward or pressing the opposite direction.

Throttle is the skill

Because you cannot choose a line, the only thing you control is speed and its direction. In practice that splits into three habits:

• Holding forward is for flat ground and for gaps you need to clear with momentum.
• Letting go lets the car roll and settle. It is often the right move just before the crest of a hill or the end of a ramp.
• Pressing the opposite direction stops a car that is going too fast for what comes next, or backs it up for another run at a slope.

The early Classic levels teach these habits one at a time. Among the first twenty you will meet levels named First Gear, Back Up, Rope Bridge, Ramp Up and Limo Ledge. The names are a decent hint. One asks you to reverse rather than push on. One puts a swaying bridge under the car. One is about the take-off speed for a ramp. And one gives you a long vehicle that has to get over an edge without hanging off it.

When it goes wrong

A crash ends the attempt and shows three buttons: Home, Retry and Levels. Retry puts you back at the start of the same level straight away, so a failed attempt costs a few seconds. If you finish, the screen offers Home, Next level and Levels instead.

Use the Levels screen when one stage has you stuck. It lets you pick another level, and you can come back to the hard one later.

Settings

The settings menu in this build has only one option: a toggle for sound effects (SFX). There is no graphics, sensitivity or control-remapping screen, so the keys in the table above are fixed.

A practical routine

• Do the first attempt of a new level slowly to see the terrain before you try it at speed.
• Find the one spot where you crash and work out whether you needed more speed or less there.
• Change one thing per attempt. Since Retry is instant, small changes are cheap to test.
• On touch screens, keep both thumbs resting on the corner buttons so switching direction does not need a reach.

Drive Mad is a Fancade game by Martin Magni. The build on this site runs in the browser, so these controls work the same on a laptop keyboard or a touch screen.