Drifting basics in Neon Dash Circuit

For our first hour with Neon Dash Circuit we braked before every corner like responsible adults, and we lost every race. The game wants you to drift, and once we committed to that the lap times tumbled.

The trick is to start your drift earlier than feels natural. Tap into the slide before the corner's apex, hold it through the turn, and release as the track straightens. You build a speed boost during the slide that launches you down the next straight.

Tilt controls give you finer drift angles than the touch buttons, in our experience, but they take practice. If you're comfortable with tilt, learn to make tiny corrections instead of big swings — the car is twitchier than it looks.

Learn the tracks. Neon Dash rewards memorization heavily, and knowing a shortcut is coming lets you set up the drift in advance. We kept a mental note of the two or three corners on each track where we always lost time.

After a weekend we were beating our own ghost by whole seconds, which is the best kind of progress — competing against yourself and winning.