Ring Arcade Project: Touristenfahrten
Media Assets
Game Description
The Nürburgring Nordschleife. 20.8 kilometres, 73 corners, 300 metres of elevation change and a nickname earned the hard way: the Green Hell. Every day it opens to the public for Touristenfahrten. Pay your fee, drive past the barrier and share the most dangerous track in the world with everyone else who had the same idea. Hot hatches, rental cars, supercars, tour buses of pensioners and one guy in a van who thinks he is Walter Röhrl.
Ring Arcade Project puts you in that queue.
It is a retro arcade racer in the spirit of the classics: bright pixel art, a pounding chiptune soundtrack and one simple rule. Touch anything and your lap is over. Barriers, traffic, deer, the wreck someone else left in Kesselchen. One mistake and you are reading a death message instead of a lap time. Then you press start again, because this time you will make it.
A REAL LAP OF THE RING The track is built from real map and elevation data, bridge to gantry, exactly the Touristenfahrten lap. The dive through Fuchsröhre, the crest at Flugplatz, the concrete banking of the Karussell, the jump at Pflanzgarten where your car leaves the ground, the endless Döttinger Höhe. If you have driven it, you will recognise it. If you have not, you will learn it the way everyone does: corner by corner, crash by crash.
TRAFFIC IS THE REAL OPPONENT Keep right, overtake left. Overtake on the right and the marshal disqualifies you on the spot. Slow cars camp in the left lane until you flash your headlights at them, and elderly couples need a few extra flashes before they notice you. Cars signal before they change lanes, queue behind wrecks with their hazard lights on and, occasionally, do something completely unpredictable. Fast cars coming up behind you will flash you too, and if you do not move over, they will explain the left-lane rule with their front bumper.
THE NORDSCHLEIFE, AS IT REALLY FEELS
- Wrecks with yellow flags, warning triangles and a jam of cars trying to squeeze past
- Oil spills and puddles that send you sliding sideways
- Deer that wander across the road and sometimes stop right in the middle
- Recovery trucks crawling along with their amber lights on
- A photographer at the Karussell who fires his flash straight into your eyes if you take the inside line fast
- A grumpy photographer at Bergwerk who only bothers to shoot the slow ones
- The Brünnchen crowd, who cheer, flash their cameras and wave their flags if you take the corners flat out
- A farmer parked in his field, watching the madness go by
YOUR SLIGHTLY DRUNK CO-PILOT Do not know the track? Your mate in the passenger seat calls every corner before it arrives: direction, severity from a hairpin 1 to a flat-out 6, and some honest advice. "Flat out until I tell you, mate." "For all that is holy, BRAKE!" "I have a wife at home. Lift!" He is not always calm, but he is always right.
SIX CARS, FOUR LEVELS OF PAIN Start in a humble 1980s coupé and work your way up through hot hatches, a rally homologation special, a Japanese track weapon, a German muscle coupé and finally a winged GT monster. Every car handles differently, understeers differently and needs a different line. Each one has four difficulties, Easy, Medium, Hard and the optional Green Hell, with a target time to beat for bronze, silver, gold and platinum trophies. Beat the targets to unlock the next car. The slow cars teach you the track. The fast ones test whether you actually learned it.
In a hurry? Quick lap drops you straight onto the track, eithern the layout or for the full Touristenfahrten chaos.
LEADERBOARDS Every car, every difficulty, every quick lap has its own global leaderboard, split between desktop and mobile so thumbs never have to race against keyboards. Pick a nickname and find out how you stack up against the rest of the world.
PLAY ANYWHERE, INSTANTLY
It runs in your browser on desktop, phone or tablet. No download, no account, no ads. Play with the keyboard, with on-screen touch pads, or with auto-accelerate if you just want to steer and brake.
WHY THIS GAME EXISTS It was made after a month living in Drees, five minutes from the track in my own car and in rentals, going to races and carmeets, and spending far too long at Brünnchen watching people get it right and badly wrong. Every little detail in the game, from the marshals to the pensioners in the left lane, comes from being there. If you longs back some memories. If you have never been, I hope it makes you want to go.
STATE OF THIS GAME Ring Arcade Project: Touristenfahrten is published with only one mode, the tourist lap. If the game is well received and adopted, there are two more games in store right after, trackday mode (full Nordshleife track, sportier cars) and endurance (full racing layout with different race car categories all fighting to survive). If we reach this stage, the next step would be adding multiplayer mode. And even further ahead, in case the game really had a high adoption, there's a story mode already planned which will blow your mind!
Now get in, keep right, and whatever you do, don't lift at Schwedenkreuz.
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Media Assets
Game Description
The Nürburgring Nordschleife. 20.8 kilometres, 73 corners, 300 metres of elevation change and a nickname earned the hard way: the Green Hell. Every day it opens to the public for Touristenfahrten. Pay your fee, drive past the barrier and share the most dangerous track in the world with everyone else who had the same idea. Hot hatches, rental cars, supercars, tour buses of pensioners and one guy in a van who thinks he is Walter Röhrl.
Ring Arcade Project puts you in that queue.
It is a retro arcade racer in the spirit of the classics: bright pixel art, a pounding chiptune soundtrack and one simple rule. Touch anything and your lap is over. Barriers, traffic, deer, the wreck someone else left in Kesselchen. One mistake and you are reading a death message instead of a lap time. Then you press start again, because this time you will make it.
A REAL LAP OF THE RING The track is built from real map and elevation data, bridge to gantry, exactly the Touristenfahrten lap. The dive through Fuchsröhre, the crest at Flugplatz, the concrete banking of the Karussell, the jump at Pflanzgarten where your car leaves the ground, the endless Döttinger Höhe. If you have driven it, you will recognise it. If you have not, you will learn it the way everyone does: corner by corner, crash by crash.
TRAFFIC IS THE REAL OPPONENT Keep right, overtake left. Overtake on the right and the marshal disqualifies you on the spot. Slow cars camp in the left lane until you flash your headlights at them, and elderly couples need a few extra flashes before they notice you. Cars signal before they change lanes, queue behind wrecks with their hazard lights on and, occasionally, do something completely unpredictable. Fast cars coming up behind you will flash you too, and if you do not move over, they will explain the left-lane rule with their front bumper.
THE NORDSCHLEIFE, AS IT REALLY FEELS
- Wrecks with yellow flags, warning triangles and a jam of cars trying to squeeze past
- Oil spills and puddles that send you sliding sideways
- Deer that wander across the road and sometimes stop right in the middle
- Recovery trucks crawling along with their amber lights on
- A photographer at the Karussell who fires his flash straight into your eyes if you take the inside line fast
- A grumpy photographer at Bergwerk who only bothers to shoot the slow ones
- The Brünnchen crowd, who cheer, flash their cameras and wave their flags if you take the corners flat out
- A farmer parked in his field, watching the madness go by
YOUR SLIGHTLY DRUNK CO-PILOT Do not know the track? Your mate in the passenger seat calls every corner before it arrives: direction, severity from a hairpin 1 to a flat-out 6, and some honest advice. "Flat out until I tell you, mate." "For all that is holy, BRAKE!" "I have a wife at home. Lift!" He is not always calm, but he is always right.
SIX CARS, FOUR LEVELS OF PAIN Start in a humble 1980s coupé and work your way up through hot hatches, a rally homologation special, a Japanese track weapon, a German muscle coupé and finally a winged GT monster. Every car handles differently, understeers differently and needs a different line. Each one has four difficulties, Easy, Medium, Hard and the optional Green Hell, with a target time to beat for bronze, silver, gold and platinum trophies. Beat the targets to unlock the next car. The slow cars teach you the track. The fast ones test whether you actually learned it.
In a hurry? Quick lap drops you straight onto the track, eithern the layout or for the full Touristenfahrten chaos.
LEADERBOARDS Every car, every difficulty, every quick lap has its own global leaderboard, split between desktop and mobile so thumbs never have to race against keyboards. Pick a nickname and find out how you stack up against the rest of the world.
PLAY ANYWHERE, INSTANTLY
It runs in your browser on desktop, phone or tablet. No download, no account, no ads. Play with the keyboard, with on-screen touch pads, or with auto-accelerate if you just want to steer and brake.
WHY THIS GAME EXISTS It was made after a month living in Drees, five minutes from the track in my own car and in rentals, going to races and carmeets, and spending far too long at Brünnchen watching people get it right and badly wrong. Every little detail in the game, from the marshals to the pensioners in the left lane, comes from being there. If you longs back some memories. If you have never been, I hope it makes you want to go.
STATE OF THIS GAME Ring Arcade Project: Touristenfahrten is published with only one mode, the tourist lap. If the game is well received and adopted, there are two more games in store right after, trackday mode (full Nordshleife track, sportier cars) and endurance (full racing layout with different race car categories all fighting to survive). If we reach this stage, the next step would be adding multiplayer mode. And even further ahead, in case the game really had a high adoption, there's a story mode already planned which will blow your mind!
Now get in, keep right, and whatever you do, don't lift at Schwedenkreuz.