Need for Madness — Play Free Online

Need for Madness is a 3D racing game where finishing first is only half the job. You drive a car around a closed track against a pack of computer opponents, and the others on the grid are not shy about shoving you into walls. The pace is quick, a lap is short, and a bad corner can turn into a spin you have to recover from, so a round rarely feels like a calm drive.

On Doodle Jump the appeal is the same pull-you-back-in loop as the jumpers: you fail fast, you know exactly what went wrong, and restarting costs nothing. If you like climbing a bit higher each attempt, you will probably like shaving a bit more time off a lap or holding position a bit longer here. It runs in the browser with nothing to install.

How to play

Steer and drive with the arrow keys or WASD, and use the mouse to aim and pick from the menus. On a phone, tap and swipe instead. Menus and selections are mouse or touch driven, while the driving itself is keyboard driven, so keep a hand on each if you are on a laptop.

Each race is a matter of getting round the circuit ahead of the other cars. Contact is part of the game: bumping rivals, and being bumped, changes who is in front, so it pays to think about where on the road you want to be rather than only how fast you are going.

Tips

• Ease off before a sharp corner instead of braking in the middle of it. Entering slower and leaving faster usually beats arriving flat out and hitting the wall.
• Stay out of the middle of the pack at the start. Cars that are bunched together get tangled, and the clean line on the outside costs less than a collision.
• If you spin or land badly, correct the steering gently. Wrenching the wheel back and forth tends to make the car slide more.
• Replay the same track a few times. Learning where the awkward corners are is the quickest way to improve.

Similar games on Doodle Jump

Most of the catalogue here is about jumping and reflexes, so this is one of the few driving pages. Doodle Jump itself is a one-button climb with no opponents. Helix Jump is a quick, one-finger reaction game. Fireboy and Watergirl swaps speed for puzzle solving and works best with two players on one keyboard.

Need for Madness suits short sessions: a race or two while you wait, or a longer run if you keep chasing a better finish. It is better with a keyboard than with touch controls.