About Trackmania
Trackmania (TM) is the world’s most competitive racing game. First released in 2003, this evergreen franchise really hit its stride in 2008 with the release of TM Nations Forever. Why? Well, it was free-to-play. The game then passed through several evolutions, including the gorgeously designed Trackmania Turbo.
We now find Ubisoft Nadeo, the developer, has forged a new approach. With the release of Trackmania in July 2020, Ubisoft Nadeo shed itself from the pattern it had settled into. Instead of a once-off payment for the game, it introduced a subscription service.
There were cries of outrage… but were they justified? Are they justified? Nadeo promised this new revenue model enables them to give the game all the attention it deserves, year in and year out. So, although the initial reaction was poor, they have held true to their word, introducing new surfaces and new game modes consistently.
To top it off, although there is content hidden behind a paywall, there is free-to-play content, most notably, the seasonal campaigns. Released every three months, we are now in the Winter 2022 campaign, released on January the 1st.
Trackmania Gameplay
Wirtual, a Trackmania content creator, plays its most popular competition, Cup of the Day
In the campaign, there are 25 tracks you can play, with five tracks per difficulty level. Your goal is to gain all the medals, Bronze, Silver, Gold and Author. You can also play Ranked, which pits you and two similarly skilled players against three other players, where you play rounds on a single track of the campaign.
Yet, behind the paywall is a virtually unlimited experience. With standard access, you gain access to the map editor and the ability to play any of the 31,000 user-made tracks. Not only that, you can join its most popular competitive event, Cup of the Day, where over 3000 players join every day to battle it out on a new, curated Track of the Day.
You also have the option to play Royal as part of the free-to-play starter access. It’s a series of five stunt maps with knockouts on each map. Although, if you join outside of its Super Royale hours, you may be left racing the ghosts of runs driven in previous matches.
| Cup of The Day | Super Royal |
|---|---|
| 19:00 (Most prestigious) | 20:00 (Most attended) |
| 3:00 | 4:00 |
| 11:00 | 12:00 |
If you’re willing to splurge that extra bit more, you can buy Club access, which gives you custom skins, access to Clubs and their content, and very critically, you can see the ghosts of players on the leaderboard.
One of SchumiSkins’… skins. He won the 2021 Skinner of the Year Trackmania award. (Could they not find a better name for it!?)
Why is it important to have a sixth sense? Well, Trackmania has a hunting culture. It’s where you spend hours on a track to eke out an extra tenth of a second. Seeing ghosts of better drivers can really help with that. You can aim for the medals or, if you are really loving it, you can aim to place higher on the comprehensive leaderboards. You can compete against those in your local region, your country or the whole world. At the end of the season, your rank is locked in and you’re awarded trophies.
Wanna know more about the trophies? Listen, you actually don’t. It’s confusing. Kind of. Basically, you receive trophies of different impressiveness depending on what you accomplish. But since we’re talking about confusion, let’s talk about the UX/UI.
The menus are a maze. No, not amaze, they're a maze. With so much content, it’s easy to get lost, to just have no idea how to do the thing you want to do. It’s like moving to a new town, you don’t know where anything is at first, but once you’ve been there for a while, not only do you know where the supermarket is, you now know where to buy weels… I mean, wheels… Sorry, I sometimes mess up my spelling.
The beauty about Trackmania is that once the bug has bitten you, there’s always more to it. You can learn a new tech line. Bored of tech? Learn how to keep your gear on dirt. Bored of driving? Make your own map. Bored of having fun? Play on the ice surface. It’s endless content.
If you are intent on getting better, be sure to check out some of the better players on Twitch. Scrapie and Spam are not only Pro drivers, but they’re also great entertainers. Wirtual makes excellent documentaries about the history of Trackmania, but he also does fun streams. Sometimes Lirik also streams Cup of the Day.
Wirtual’s video about pioneers and how they do the impossible… in a game… about toy cars. No, but really, it’s good.
Altogether, the community is very friendly and welcoming, after all, you can’t really int in a mostly solo player game. The community is so crucial to the game, some even create custom game modes. Trackmania Formula League emulates F1: You’ve got tire wear, your fuel runs out and it’s all about consistency, lap after lap. FlagRush is a new mode, It’s like capture the flag, but with vroom. If you start digging into community competitions and content, you’ll find even more depth.
Trackmania Graphics
Mith Odasyne, one of the incredible maps made by htimh, an exceptional scenery maker. It’s available on TMX.
The graphics are a real treat. It does depend on how much effort the mapper has put in, some maps can be plain, some are out of this world (see above). You can get away with a fairly average setup, but of course, the better the setup, the more opportunity you have to enjoy the graphics. If you can’t run it, try out Trackmania Nations Forever (available on steam). It still has an active community, with online servers still running and it has hundreds of thousands of maps to download.
Hardware requirements for TM2020.
Trackmania Developer
Ubisoft Nadeo was known only as Nadeo from 2000 to 2009, when Ubisoft acquired them. Founded by Florent ‘Hylis’ Castelnérac and still run by him, they are most well known for their Trackmania series. With the new subscription model, they have committed to maintaining and developing the game for many years to come.
Trackmania Price
The game is available on Ubisoft Connect and Epic Games and requires a Ubisoft account to play. At present, it is only available on Windows. As mentioned, there are different tiers of subscriptions.
| Seasonal Campaign (25 Tracks) |
| Training Tracks |
| Ranked |
| Royal |
| Arcade Rooms (where you discover new maps) |
| All Starter Content |
| Full Map Editor |
| Play User-made Maps |
| Full Replay Editor |
| Track/Cup of the Day |
| Previous Seasonal Campaigns |
| View Leaderboards |
| Play Public Campaigns |
| All Starter and Standard Content |
| Spectate Leaderboard Ghosts |
| Join Clubs and Create your Own |
| Play in Online Rooms in Clubs |
| Skin Customization |
| Join Other Competitions |
| Play in the Open Grand League to go Pro |
The Final Verdict
9/10. Easy to learn, hard to master. Endless refining of skill, endless content.
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| Devs are always improving the game | Subscription model doesn't suit casuals |
| Free-to-Play access has lots of content | Ice is hard |
| Excellent mechanics | |
| Clear measurement of progression | |
| Endless content (behind paywall) | |
| Comprehensive leaderboards | |
| Great community | |
| Good for competitive or casual gameplay | |
| No play-to-win or in-game purchases |
