Three Hazards teaming up to take down a racer.
Driftin.io
is a multiplayer racing Web Game, created by Sidney de Vries on 18th of August, 2016. In it, up to ten players per match choose one out of eleven highly abstract-looking racing vehicles and start racing, earning upgrade points every time they either successfully complete a lap, or wreck another player.The round ends whenever one player manages to complete 20 laps; however, if they get wrecked, either through crashing into the walls or through getting rammed by other players, they have to start accumulating laps all over again.
Driftin.io features examples of the following tropes:
- Attack Reflector: The Bully class is large blue ball. Buster's cannonballs and other vehicles ramming into it will bounce off (potentially into a wall) and only deal partial damage. This Bounce Power can be upgraded further.
- Car Fu: Unless you are the cannon-equipped Buster class, ramming is the main method for taking out the other players. Each class has a stat devoted to how much damage it can inflict through ramming others - and how much damage will be received by the players ramming you. There's also the Defence stat for your vehicle's resistance to being rammed, or crashing into walls.
- The Hazard class, which even looks like a spiky ball, is both the best at ramming others, and the worst possible target the others could ram, so it's usually avoided, as its slow speed makes it impossible for it to win a race if it fails to consistently wreck the leaders. Moreover, its slow speed and large profile makes it an ideal target for Buster's cannon.
- Classes with 1 Defence like Flash, Piercer or Deprived generally try to bait the attackers into ramming, before speeding away at the last second and letting them crash into a wall.
- Class and Level System: There are ten normal classes and a "secret" one note . Each one of them has three primary stats that can be upgraded up to ten times with the points earned through completing the laps.
- Deadly Walls: Downplayed. Hitting walls does cause damage, but it's relatively minor, in comparison to the damage inflicted by the others' vehicles, especially if they are damage-oriented.
- Fragile Speedster: The Flash class has its Speed stat equal 6 (for comparison, the default Racer's Speed is 3), and can upgrade it further. Every other stat it has is equal to 1. Including Handling.
- The Piercer class is similar. Its speed is at 5, but it also has Handling equal to 4, while its Defence and Damage are still equal to 1. However, it also has the Force Push special ability, which allows it to both push itself off of corners, and to push away the players trying to ram it, or even to intentionally finish off a wounded rival by pushing them into a corner.
- Healing Shiv: The Ambulamp class fires healing orbs. It can either heal other players and hope they wouldn't try to attack it out of gratitude, or try to heal itself through firing the orb at a wall and trying to ensure it bounces back to them, which is quite difficult.
- Heal Thyself: Many classes can choose not to upgrade themselves at the start of a lap, and instead keep a point in reserve so that it may be spent on a repair kit for the sake of emergency repairs.
- Intangible Man: The Secret Class can briefly phase through the walls, which is referred to as a "wall hack". It has horrible stats to compensate for that.
- Jack of All Trades: The default Racer class, which has all of its primary stats equal to 3, whereas the other classes generally have some stats raised to 4, 5 or even 6, at the expense of others being down to 2 or 1. (Besides the Deprived class, which has all stats equal to 1.)
- Joke Character: The Deprived class, which has all of its starting stats equal to 1. Still, some players use them precisely because other players do not consider them much of a threat, and so will ignore them and try to wreck each other until they've built up a substantial lead.
- Level-Up Fill-Up: Like in Doblons.io, a naval combat .io Game by the same creator, using a stat point to raise your vehicle's max health will immediately heal it a little. Moreover, completing a lap immediately heals off all the damage you may have sustained by that point.
- Nitro Boost: Every class has it, and it is also recharged upon completing a lap, along with health. However, only the race-oriented classes can upgrade its capacity, or have it regenerate on its own. The Hazard class also burns through boost far faster than the others, due to its highly un-aerodynamic shape.
- Painfully Slow Projectile: The cannon of the Buster class fires a large, yet very slow projectile, since otherwise it would be too easy for them to wreck everyone else.
- Regenerating Health: Some of the classes have this as a stat, which will begin to work once they've invested at least one point into it.
- RPG Elements: Every class has 4 primary stats that are often fixed: Speed, Defence, Damage and Handling, whose power differs from 1 to 5. Every time you complete a lap, or wreck another vehicle, you get a point that can be spent to raise one of your class' three or four secondary stats. The exact combinations of upgradable stats differ for each class - i.e. Ambulamp and Buster can upgrade their projectiles, but are unable to upgrade their movement speed, like the majority of the classes. Some of the more racing-oriented classes can raise max boost amount and/or have it regenerate.
- Shoot the Medic First: Some players intentionally target the Ambulamps, so that they wouldn't be able to heal their rivals. This behavior is generally frowned upon though, and may result in the remaining players prioritising them above everyone else.
- Shout-Out: The class that can turn itself invincible for a short while is a yellow star.
- Tall Poppy Syndrome: The leaders who are well on their way to 20 laps are bound to get targeted more than anybody else. It's even possible that many (or all) of the remaining players will team up in order to wreck their vehicle and force them to start again.
- Video Game Caring Potential: The Ambulamps get to engage in a lot of this with their healing power. Other players can reciprocate by acting to protect them. Ironically, this is best done with the Bully class, as it has a lot of health and is bouncy, thus able to block rammers and get them to bounce off. At the same time, it doesn't do much damage ramming itself, and so there's little risk of accidentally ramming the same Ambulamp you wanted to protect.
- Video Game Cruelty Potential: Of course, other players will intentionally target Ambulamps instead - see Shoot the Medic First above. It's also possible to act as an Ambulamp's protector with the goal of together making it into the top two, then betray it around the last lap.
