A kart racer that ships with no art assets at all. Not one image, model, font or sound file — every texture, mesh, livery, note and spark is generated in code while the page loads, from the kerb stripes and the crowd to the tyre tread and the sky.
The circuit is Sunset Bay: a harbour sweep, a village climb through a set of esses, a cliff traverse, a tunnel, a beach descent and one hard banked 180. Karts run four-corner raycast suspension with a slip-angle tyre model, so weight moves under you and a kerb genuinely unsettles the car.
Drifting is the whole game. Hold a slide and it charges a mini-turbo through three tiers — blue, orange, purple — and the stick you hold inside the corner decides whether your line tightens or runs wide.
Multiplayer is drop-in. Up to eight share a room, every kart nobody claims is driven by the AI so the grid is always full, and opening the link mid-race drops you into the race already happening. A live board shows where your friends are — their place, the gap to you, and a callout the moment one of them takes you.
Built by Ryan Campbell. Source: github.com/ryancampbell/kart-royale · write-up: ryancampbell.com/kart-royale
How to play Kart Royale
GOAL
Three laps of Sunset Bay against seven other karts. First across the line wins, and your race time goes on the room's board.
CONTROLS — keyboard
Arrows or WASD to steer and accelerate
Down / S to brake, and to reverse at a standstill
Shift to drift — hold it
Space / Enter / E to use your item
Esc for the menu
CONTROLS — phone or tablet
Left thumb is the steering stick. DRIFT and BRAKE sit bottom right, ITEM fires whatever you picked up. Landscape works best — add it to your home screen and you get the whole panel with no browser chrome.
DRIFTING, WHICH IS THE POINT
Tap drift going into a corner and the kart hops, then slides. Hold the slide and it charges a mini-turbo: blue, then orange, then purple. Let go and it fires. Holding the stick INTO the corner makes the slide bite and tightens your line; holding it out lets the back end run wide. Put the whole kart off the road and you lose the charge.
A quick blip of throttle as the lights go out earns a rocket start. Hold it down through the whole countdown and you bog down instead.
ITEMS
Drive through a box. What you get depends on where you are running — the back of the field gets the good stuff. Shells, bananas, mushrooms, a star, and a bolt that shrinks everyone ahead of you. Hold brake or look-back while firing to throw it behind you.
RACING YOUR FRIENDS
Everyone in the room races together, up to eight, and any player can start a race — every screen counts the same lights down to the same moment. While you race, the board on the left lists the PEOPLE in the room: their place, the gap to you in seconds, and a flash on the row the instant one of them gains or loses a place. The results board says who was driving which kart.
