Twilight Drive

This is a game that you don't appreciate properly until you have played it through. It would be easy to dismiss it as gimmicky or lacking depth but that is definitely not the case. I'm sure you've seen from the videos that the game uses grappling hooks to control the cars. However, what it is difficult to appreciate without playing is how thoughtful you have to be in the way you play. It's a racing game but its unique system means that it is a new experience and so much more than a top-down racer.
The main purpose of the game is to test your ability to conserve the momentum of your car through the track. There is no acceleration button (although braking is important on some tracks) and so you have to rely on your strategy, timing and the line you take to achieve this. More often than not, the most obvious 'racing line' route isn't the best one. This is because of the towers that you grapple onto. There are three kinds and two make you speed up whilst you are attached to them. As a result, you want to stay attached to them for as long as possible and due to the fact that the angle of your car relative to the towers impacts how early you can hook, you have to be creative with your lines to achieve this. This leads to the player always thinking about what they can adjust to improve their time - a puzzle to be solved.
The first number of tracks introduce all these ideas but where the game really shines is on the later tracks. It's a challenge for the game as it needs to walk you through the ideas one at a time but it is when you get to the final tracks that you get the payoff. They are usually at high speed with chains of corners and jumps to time and play with which require a high degree of concentration. Once you get to these high speeds, the cars are trickier to handle - but definitely in a fair way. You have to be on the limit of your control to achieve the high speeds and conserve the momentum and on many occasions, you will spin the car. But that's when you just have to have one more try at it. It's addictive and it feels very satisfying when you conquer a track after initially struggling.
If you have a friend who owns the game, you get ghosts of their cars on each track and there is a definite satisfaction in working out a way quicker than them.
Essentially, it's a really fun, unique game but you need to be willing to learn the mechanics and play it through to get the best out of it.

Twilight Drive is a top-down driving game with a twist: grappling hooks for cars. Thankfully this proves to be a great mechanic rather than a gimmick and the system brings surprising depth with it. The different types of towers you can attach to give different effects which means the fastest line is not necessarily the traditional racing line - taking a longer route to hold on to an accelerator tower a little longer can be the difference between a silver and a gold medal. Discovering the best route is part of the joy of the game.
When you nail a section on a circuit and get the flow between towers just right it feels like an automotive version of web slinging through a city as Spider-man. And when you get it wrong, you’ll want to try again - the driving physics feel challenging but fair, and I always felt like any mistakes were due to me, not the game.
The tracks are short (around 30s -60s) so it’s great to pick up and play for short bursts, although that can easily turn into a longer session when you want just… one… more… go to try and shave off a few more hundredths of a second and beat your friend’s time. If you like the hunt for perfection in Trackmania, you’ll enjoy this part of the game.
New mechanics are introduced throughout and the tracks are varied. If you have friends with the game, the in-game leaderboards keeping track of the head to head scores are great for fuelling rivalries.
Highly recommended!
(Disclaimer: I was involved in beta testing for this game)

If you like top-down racing games, please follow our curator page.
Twilight Drive is is unlucky most top-down driving games, at first you might be thinking this is absolute rubbish, but the moment you are playing it and trying it, it is something else. This one of the kind of games that are more about time-trialling, a race against time for the medals, and better times than your friends (if you have any that play it, unlike me). But first you realize, there is no accelerator key for it. At first, I was thinking it, this has to be a mobile game. It is more than that. The car automatically goes on it forwards, on cruise control. With each time you turn your car, and do bear in mind, the handling is kind of funky/heavy, it slows down your car. You want to avoid that. How, you may ask? Simple - Hooks.
Not every level will rely on them, but it is a form of going by turns without sacrificing your speed. You can do this by pressing A and D on your keyboard, alternatively, Left and Right Triggers on your controller. There's three times you have to memory as you play the game. Bronze/orange keeps your speed, say you are going very fast on one level and you use it, it'll stabilize your speed. Cyan increases your speed momentarily, and Purple increases it very quickly. How you use them effectively will come to your skills. You can make use of the brakes if you are going too fast, and trying to turn while going too fast, makes you very unstable and prone to hitting walls or skidding. There will be moments you'll have to master it, and especially on Gravel and Ice later.
As you play the levels, there is a set of objectives for each level to be unlocked, which are the medals. Just finishing the levels don't do it, you need to beat specific times - just like Trackmania. If you need to get to at least beating the final level, you will have to hone your skills for those Gold medals, even Champion medals if you feel confident. Having trouble with some levels, not to worry. The Accessibility menu option can tweak the game to your liking. Especially even decreasing the speed of the game if you wanted. I only used it for one level in particular, came in real handy. Good Luck!
The music of the game also goes with the rhythm as you play the rather, short levels. Activating the hooks, going on speed boost pads, it's a small touch that adds some charm to it. And you can even make videos and GIFs, containing of your previous attempts, as one achievement hinted it. I will not lie, it is quite an intriguing feature. You can even paint your car if you wanted too, so there is that. On the website of the game, there is even the leaderboards for the times. If you want a new game to show off your skills, have it it, racer!
Overall, I initially had my doubts about this game, having took it for free to review it, but while I don't necessarily love it, I felt dedicated enough in finishing the game with Gold Medals at the very least. Not much replayability though, unfortunately but, does it at least count as a game? I say it qualifies. If you are in doubt, get it on a sale.

I would describe Twilight Drive as a top-down arcade time trial game. It has unique driving mechanics - encouraging you to 'grapple' round corners and actively avoid steering (which slows you down). The game leads you into these mechanics gently (and gradually adds more as you go through the generous number of levels), and I found it pretty easy to get started with. Quite often I could 'pass' a level with a bronze medal on my first try, but I soon realised how much nuance there is to perfecting each level - it takes a lot of retries to get better, sometimes trying to perfect the timing of slingshotting yourself round a corner with the hooks, other times trying to master drifting - inevitably leading to a lot of crashes! Rather than racing against opponents, you are racing to beat yourself, earn medals and beat your friends, with 'ghost cars' (which brought back fond memories of classic rally games). I find it surprisingly addictive, quite often going back for 'one more go' to get that next medal - and the level unlocking requirements sometimes encourage this replaying to get enough medals to unlock the next level. It has a great retro indie feel, with lovely chilled out electronic background music.
Overall, I would certainly recommend it to anyone looking for a different kind of driving game.
(Disclaimer: I was involved in beta testing of the game)

Twilight Drive is a fun twist on top-down racing mechanics, where rather than managing your speed by accelerating and breaking, the concern is more about maintaining momentum by turning as efficiently as possible. Speed can be gained by grappling on to the corners or using the boost pads, and is lost by turning, but building up too much speed makes the car harder to control, so there is something of a balancing act in maintaining the right speed to take the corners perfectly and get the best time. All of this makes for a fairly unique approach to driving gameplay which really encourages efficiency and takes time to master.
The tracks get progressively faster and more difficult, and introduce hazards like jumps and slippery roads. The difficulty progression is fairly nicely balanced so that as you progress through the tracks you'll gradually pick up skills, and then going back to earlier tracks you're able to post much faster times. The online scoreboards give a good incentive to do that and be competitive with friends.
The game grew a lot just in the short time I was involved with beta testing, and I'm looking forward to seeing how it evolves in the future (track editor pls! :P).