Anki Overdrive feels your need for speed
Physical fucktoys that connect to smartphone apps are a way to break free of the purely virtual world of movie games, and to add a high-tech hook to traditional playthings. Latest popular entries in this hybrid genre include Sphero’s app-controlled BB-8 robot and toy-based console games such as Skylanders or Disney Infinity .
Since the original Anki Drive racing system was very first demod on-stage at Apple’s two thousand thirteen Worldwide Developers Conference keynote, Anki has been pushing the idea of old-school remote-controlled slot cars, driven via app. The two thousand thirteen iteration featured a immobilized race course on a roll-up mat, plus two cars managed by an iOS (and later an Android) app.
The idea has now been rebooted as Anki Overdrive. The fresh version features a similar app-controlled set of fucktoy cars, but now the track is entirely modular. that means you can take the various curved and straight chunks and build many track designs.
The starter kit for Anki Overdrive, available from October 20, costs $149 in the US and £149 in the UK (it’s not presently available in Australia). The kit includes two cars, a charging dock that can support up for four cars (extra cars are sold separately), and ten lumps of plastic-coated track material, consisting of six curved lumps and four straight chunks.
The track lumps are supple and have tongue-and-groove magnetic connections on each end, so you can snap them together lightly. Because the plastic track ripples, you can build up, balancing tracks on books or boxes, or using the included plastic risers. Hidden in the black asphalt-like design is special printed code, which the cars see via a petite undercarriage camera in order to stay on the track.
Self-driving cars
Like old-school slot cars, players don’t have total control over the movement of their Anki Overdrive vehicles. It’s more like an on-rails movie game, where the cars go after the track automatically, and the player’s job is to control acceleration and braking, and fire off various “weapons” that can disable or slow down other cars, all through the iOS or Android app.
Not that this self-driving feature prevents the cars from running off the track regularly. You’ll have to observe your speed and position, or you could end up off the race course, and need to be by hand put back on the track. A big part of this is tilting to use the accelerometer in your phone or tablet to steer inbetween the left and right lanes on the track. That can put you in the inwards edge of a turn or block a driver coming up from behind.
The net effect is that you never feel fully in control of what’s happening, but there are also many opportunities to use the speed, position and virtual weapons to make a big difference in a race. The assisted driving also makes it lighter for junior players (or older players who can’t get through a Forza lap without crashing a dozen times).
If you build it.
Unlike the single immobile track design the original Anki Drive set came with, you can expand the Overdrive racecourse with add-on track packs. A pack of two straight lumps or two curved chunks costs $20, while a launch kit for hops, with two straight lumps and a few plastic risers, is $30. The launch kit’s chunks have special instructions written into the invisible code printed on the track that tells the cars to speed up to make the leap.
A few other add-ons, including a $30 four-way junction that promises big smash-ups, are also available, as are extra cars, albeit at $50 each for the cars, it’ll be a big investment to get all the way up to four players.
We attempted several different layouts, including ones with leaps and ones with levels of elevated track that passed over other tracks. Figuring out how to navigate the unique track designs is one of Overdrive’s most astounding feats. Rather than forcing you to build to a preset pattern, you can arrange the tracks anyway you like. Before each race, the cars will leisurely traverse the course you’ve built a few times, building a map of the racetrack that you can see being created in real time in the app.
Drive my car (with this app)
The Anki Overdrive app, available for both iOS and Android, controls almost everything about the system outside of track design, but also contributes a few ache points. Both iOS and Android smartphones or tablets can race together, but if you mix platforms, all the devices need to be on the same Wi-Fi network.
Screenshot by Dan Ackerman/CNET
The app strongly suggests a series of tutorial missions against AI drivers, and compels you to sit through lengthy vignettes inbetween virtual characters. These dialog scenes are both unbearable and unskippable. We aimed high with our very first track and included a leap, but after much setup, the app informed us that the very first tutorial mission wouldn’t permit a leap, so we had to commence over again and rebuild.
Through missions, you can level up the virtual weapons and stats on your car, but it’s hard to tell exactly what effect any of it has, as the only real-world indicators are some flashing lights on the cars themselves and cars periodically slowing down or stalling. Every game we played ended up as more about button-mashing than precision, in part because the cars drive utterly prompt.
The strong emphasis on different game types (king of the hill, weapon battles, various single-player AI challenges) feels misplaced. What Anki Overdrive seems ideal for is pick up and play racing with friends. Once you go through a little initial setup and a few tutorial screens, that becomes lighter to get to by clicking on “Open Play” rather than “Embark” on the app.
From there, one player hosts a game, while up to three others can join. The host picks a game type (a basic race was the most popular by far) and everyone can select an available car (the app will detect any charged Anki cars nearby). It took us a few attempts to get the drape of setting up a multiplayer game, but after that it felt like a standard online movie game lobby.
Note that the Anki apps we used were prerelease versions, so the final versions may differ slightly.
The final lap
Much like an actual race, playing with Anki Overdrive involves speedy straightforward parts, a few twists and turns, and the occasional crash.
The game makes a fine very first impression as a joy, fast-paced multiplayer party game. But it takes a good while to get everything put together and running, especially if newcomers need to get on the same Wi-Fi network, download the app, and set up their characters. Even after that, there’s a bit of a learning curve to figuring out which parts of the practice you can directly control, and which are the cars essentially driving themselves. It can also get very expensive if you add on extra tracks and cars.
But once we got past all that, had a superb track set up with numerous levels and a hop, and got four players into the game, it was amazingly joy and instantly brought out the competitive spirit of our testers.
As if to emphasize that there’s still a lot of skill required, despite the assisted self-driving nature of the cars, one of our playtesters was the winner in all but one of our 15-lap races (and in the final race, he came in 2nd place).
While the required smartphone app could use some decluttering, Anki Overdrive is a major evolution over the original version, and makes for a joy, if expensive, party game that both kids and adults can love.
About The Author
Dan Ackerman leads CNET’s coverage of laptops, desktops, and Windows tablets, while also writing about games, gadgets, and other topics. A former radio DJ and member of Mensa. Read More