TrackMania’s console release shows free-to-play, arcade racing and even live service at its best
I’m genuinely impressed that TrackMania still exists. A cult hit ever since its first release on PC in 2003, the IP and its developer Nadeo were snapped up by Ubisoft in 2009; its relatively small-scale yet consistently well-regarded status feels like the sort of thing that the publisher would have quietly had taken out the back and shot so they could focus more on making Generic Open World Game #872. But no! Somehow, TrackMania has not only survived until 2023, it has thrived enough for its latest installment to make the jump from PC to console platforms, where a whole new audience will be able to discover its joys. For free! Kind of.
The TrackMania series has enjoyed numerous sequels over the years, and just to confuse matters the most recent entry in the series, first released on PC in 2020, is simply called “TrackMania”. The intention, presumably, is for the latest to be the last TrackMania game released as a standalone product, and instead act as a “platform” for future development of the series.
I say “presumably” because this isn’t the first time that the TrackMania series has attempted to establish a coherent platform of sorts; the multiple releases in the TrackMania 2 series on PC were supposed to herald in a brave new dawn of “ManiaPlanet”, which was also intended to support the first-person shooter ShootMania and the online RPG QuestMania — but the former ended up abandoned and the latter never even saw an initial release. TrackMania 2’s multiple incarnations are still playable, mind — but I digress.
TrackMania 2020, as the latest version tends to be referred to, was released as a free-to-play game. And, surprisingly for a publisher like Ubisoft, the game eschews things like battle passes, microtransactions and other obnoxious elements that are normally found in supposedly “free” games. Instead, the game offers a tiered membership model, with three available options for players to engage with, depending on how seriously they want to take the game.
The free tier allows you access to the game itself, including a seasonal campaign of official courses from Nadeo that updates every three months. It also allows you to play the multiplayer mode online, though restricts you to either official servers or a rotating lineup of community servers in the ongoing “Arcade” mode. Finally, it provides access to the track editor, allowing you to create and save your own courses and play them offline, either solo or in the game’s excellent split-screen and hotseat multiplayer modes.
The “Standard” access package, which costs £7.99 per year, provides everything from the free tier plus the ability to play an officially selected Track of the Day against the community, the ability to download and play custom maps, the ability to keep and replay previous seasonal campaigns, the opportunity to join and participate in public servers, and make use of in-game chat.
The “Club” access package, which costs £24.99 per year or £49.99 for three years, allows you to create your own clubs to organise events and groups of players, host your own multiplayer sessions on Nadeo’s dedicated servers, participate in official esports events and compete against ghosts downloaded from the online leaderboards.
In other words, each tier allows you to take the game a little bit more seriously. If you’re wanting to develop your multiplayer career, for example, the Standard access package is a good choice, as it provides a lot more opportunities for you to explore the vast amounts of user-made content available for the game. If you’re a community leader or someone who takes the esports side of TrackMania very seriously, the Club package is where you’ll want to be, as this offers the most flexibility to enjoy and customise the game as you see fit.
For many players, however, the free tier will provide more than enough game to enjoy. The seasonal campaigns provide plenty of different tracks to enjoy, and the online play gives you a taste of what has been created by the community, but in a fairly controlled, “official-feeling” environment.
You can fully enjoy the game on a daily basis and never really run out of things to do, all without paying a penny — though it is worth noting that you’ll need to be subscribed to the console platforms’ multiplayer-enabling services such as PlayStation Plus in order to play online. Within TrackMania itself, though, there’s no pressure for you to purchase in-game currency, no reward tiers to work towards, nothing but the game.
And the game, if you’ve not come across it before, is formidably addictive. Taking the form of an easy to learn but hard to master arcade racer, TrackMania primarily unfolds as a time attack, in which you’re challenged to beat various par times on the courses to either obtain medals in single-player, or battle your way up the rankings in the online modes.
Handling is simple but features a ton of hidden depth; understanding the physics of how your car behaves on various surfaces, in the air and under water is absolutely crucial to success in TrackMania, and it’s something you can only learn through experience.
That said, the game’s bronze and silver medals in particular are set at accessible enough levels that even the most cack-handed drivers can enjoy some success in the game while they attempt to build up their confidence and skills. And the way in which the game tracks your progress against people in your region and across the world affords you a truly granular look at how much difference just a few hundredths of a second can make.
Interestingly, when playing in multiplayer, there is no contact between racers — you can see other racers, but you can’t crash into them, which means two things. Firstly, you can learn some clever tricks for improving your times by watching your peers. And secondly, you can never blame your mistakes on other people — they’re only ever your fault.
The exact structure of multiplayer matches varies according to what kind of game you’re playing. Arcade mode matches are simply a free-for-all in which you’re aiming to take the top spot on the leaderboard; you have as many tries at the track as you want within a short time limit in order to achieve this.
Ranked mode, meanwhile, often tends to unfold as a team-based affair, in which players are grouped up into teams of three to compete against one another for points. In each round of this mode, you only have one shot at the course, so make it count.
Finally, Royal mode, which was added some time after TrackMania’s original 2020 release, is an adaptation of the “Platform” mode that was found in earlier entries in the series. Here, you’re challenged to complete as many legs of a precarious, highly technical multi-stage course as possible before time expires. The players who manage to get the furthest and with the best times move on to the next round and a new multi-stage course, while the bottom few players are eliminated.
Yes, it’s a battle royale sort of structure with more than a touch of stuff like Fall Guys about it, but the fact that you’re in cars and under no obligation to finish the entire course gives it its own, very distinct feel. It’s a lot of fun.
TrackMania is a superb game with potentially limitless longevity, and its release on console — along with the fact that the console versions support both cross-play and importing of your progress from the PC version — means that a whole new audience will be able to enjoy this fantastic racing experience.
While longstanding purists may baulk at the move to a subscription model rather than the ability to purchase the game outright, if ever there was a game where the “live service” model made absolutely perfect sense, it is the ever-changing TrackMania. So here’s hoping Ubisoft keep it up and running for many years to come.
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