SuperTuxKart is now available on Android & ChromeOS.
The hugely popular open-source kart racing game is available on Linux, Windows and Mac, but this marks its official mobile debut.
Its arrival on Android has been several years in the making.
“Our aim is the create a game that is more fun than realistic, and provide an enjoyable experience for all ages,” reads the Google Play Store blurb.
So what’s it like?
I took the SuperTuxKart Android port for a quick spin, blasting my way through my favourite tracks. Overall the game seems similar enough to the desktop version that I’m used to. It’s has a full compliment of tracks and arenas, there’s storyline mode, battle modes, and more.
Controlling your kart is simple enough: there’s a steering wheel on the left of the screen for acceleration and direction, and buttons on the right for breaking around corners and checking your rear-view mirror for rival racers.
Like other famous kart racers you can pick up item boxes as you drive around. An on-screen button is used to fire any items you’re carrying.
The SuperTuxKart Android also supports accelerometer steering, but you’ll need to dive into the settings section to enable it.
The set-up and selection screens feels a little awkward in touch. Some options, particularly during character selection, seem to jump ahead before you’ve finished selecting all your options.
Performance
Performance seems competitive enough.
I tested SuperTuxKart for Android on an Intel-based Acer Chromebook. I played the game using the default graphics settings (‘3’) and it looked and played decent enough. That said, the game did occasionally experience some rendering slowdown when too many racers were on top of each other.
I’m not sure if this was a limitation of my device, the app not being ‘optimised’ for Chromebooks, or the game itself.
The graphics quality can be turned up for more immersive, graphically-rich animations, lighting effects, and so on. On higher settings I found the game less fluid and enjoyable. Your milage may vary.
Download SuperTuxKart for Android
SuperTuxKart is a free download for Android 4.4 and up. It’s a 98.56MB download (so you may want to download it over Wi-Fi rather than your data plan):
Don’t use Google Play? You can download the SuperTuxKart Android APK from the project’s Sourceforge page. It’s available for both ARM and Intel-based Android devices.