Hot Lap League: Racing Mania! – goes free to play

Developers decided to make, this previously paid title – free to play. If you haven’t heard about it before, this is an arcade time attack racing game with twisted tracks and fearsome power drifts. The best thing of all, there is no energy system, so you can play until your battery dies. It also looks and runs great!

Jump to Hot Lap League Download + APK

Brief summary of the game

Hot Lap League: Racing Mania has over 150 tracks. The gameplay is all about setting a record time on each stage, and if you earn one of the three medals, you unlock the next one. Driving is very simple, but also hard to master. It’s all about power drifting, or sliding around the corners. It’s not hard, but a tiny mistake can throw you off just enough to miss that 1 second needed for gold. Luckily, you can restart the race instantly, and I do mean instantly. Just tap the restart button and in less than 1 second, you are back at the starting point. Controls are very responsive and you can also customize their position and size. The only other car that you will ever see on the track with you is the ghost car (hopefully) trailing behind you. Races are short and sweet, they usually last between 30 and 60 seconds, with rare exceptions.

Needless to say, Hot Lap League looks insanely good. You also get full 60 FPS and antialiasing, but if your Android phone can’t handle that, you can lower the settings or even set a 30 FPS cap.

Completing the daily objectives, winning medals and the daily challenge, grants you gold. The one and only currency in the game. Gold is used to purchase faster cars and visual upgrades such as decals, paints, wheels etc. If you struggle getting a gold medal on certain tracks, that clearly means you need a faster car. And here is the potential problem of the game, limited amount of cars. You can only have 3 “Metro” and 3 “Alpine” cars, but that might change now that the game is free for everyone.

What can be improved?

Now that Hot Lap League is free to play, I am convinced that the developers will see a surge of new players. This means that potential improvements will probably (or hopefully) be implemented in near future. Aside from the number of cars, the game lacks a track editor. A feature that will definitely appeal to all Trackmania fans.

There is no multiplayer per-se, although leaderboards are fully functional. Some sort of mayhem with around 4 players and huge track twists would be fun to see. Furthermore, the game needs an “add a friend” feature, even if its purpose is competing on the leaderboard or against their ghosts. In the current state, you are limited to some daily challenges and one daily event. That’s just not enough to retain customers on the long run.

Speaking of customers, there is an in-app store where you can see daily deals, or buy the gold needed for upgrading not only visuals, but unlocking the remain cars too.

I recorder a short showcase video with gameplay, customization (garage) overview and the in-app store.

Download

Hot Lap League: Racing Mania! is available for free on the Android Play Store and Apple’s store. If you can’t access Google’s store, you can find the link below to download the APK directly.

	Excellent graphics		Needs more cars and Track editor
	Easy to pick up and play		Needs multiplayer
	Huge track selection		Needs more events (daily or weekly)
	No energy bar

Dejan B. – “Hot Lap League: Racing Mania! – goes free to play”