Only 2 weeks to go until Joyride: Survival of the Fastest retail launch! We know a lot of players out there want more options to play Joyride with just 2 players before the release of the Duel edition (2 player version of Joyride, releasing early 2025), so we wanted to share our approach for designing courses for lower player counts with the base game.
This is specifically looking at creating 2 player tracks on the larger boards, but would be applicable for tighter 3 and 4 player races too. We’ll be giving examples from the Junkyard and Overpass maps throughout – so you get a couple of bonus tracks out of it if nothing else!
Limit the Space
While you absolutely can play a 2 player game of Joyride on the full size boards, We’ve found that limiting the space available to the players makes for more entertaining games with more interaction and trickier tactical decisions.
Using just the obstacles included in Joyride: Survival of the Fastest you can block off considerable sections of the track, giving you and your opponent less space to race around.
Below you can see one way in which you can reduce the space on both the Junkyard and the Overpass tracks.
Gate Placement
When it comes to gate placement in a 2-player game, the approach is similar to for 3-4 player tracks – having players double back on themselves to get from gate-to-gate helps to maximize the chances of interaction with your opponent, whether it be crunching collisions, lining up a perfect shot, or leaving dropped items for them to run into.
We like to try to limit the number of long straights more than on a 4-player track to encourage those ferocious duels around corners, but you still want to give players an opportunity to go up and down the gears. Create a course with too many sharp corners and you and your opponent will spend the whole game locked in second gear – great for a leisurely evening drive, not so good for a destruction derby.
Of course, the other thing worth mentioning is that with only 2 players, the start gate doesn’t need to be 4 wide. I usually will stick with gates either 3 or 4 wide, but if you were feeling particularly mean you could set up a 2-hex wide gate.
Here are the two tracks with some gates thrown down:
The positioning of Gate 1 relative to the starting line can lead to interesting decisions as players start a second and third lap – by looping around and approaching Gate 3 from above they can cross the starting line in the opposite direction to the way they began the race, which could leave them on a better route through Gate 1 and 2 for the second lap
On this track, you might be tempted to branch right early on and approach Gate 1 from the other side, although if all the cars do that it will be tight. Your starting roll might make that decision for you, but the jumps on the Overpass do give you a good excuse to really put your foot down!
Items Aplenty
Interaction with your opponent is a key feature in Joyride – just because you have fewer players, doesn’t mean you have to have fewer items!
On both these tracks We’ve given the players items on every gate they cross (barring the start/finish line). This bumps up the amount of mischief you can get up to in the game, but also will help increase the chances of you getting items you can really make use of.
Limit The Space Even More
So we already limited the space by closing off part of the track, but we’d usually look around the board and look for racing lines that seem like they could be a bit too advantageous. Rather than having one obvious route that everyone will gravitate towards, We always prefer it when you have options on the track and different approaches you can take depending on the position you find yourself in.
On the Junkyard track, the straight along the top of the board looked a bit too appealing. We didn’t want to get rid of it entirely, but just made it a bit trickier by popping some obstacles there. Players can still reach high gears and build up speed around the track, but they are also more likely to slow down (potentially quite fast!) to avoid crashing.
On the Overpass track, the second gate can feel a bit too generous, so we increased the size of the middle obstacle with two of the 3-hex tiles. You’ll still be able to jump through the gate, but it adds a bit more risk to it. We also wanted to make the loop around the edge of the map a little less viable, as it could give players quite a safe route to take, so added an extra bit of junk to the map to leave players with a small gap in the bottom right corner of the map if they really want to take that route.
Both of these tracks could be tweaked further with items added to the board (either face down to be collected, or pre-laid mines/oil slicks to add to the chaos). You could choose how many laps you want to do – with longer races requiring more endurance and careful driving than shorter ones and thus altering how you need to approach them.
Hopefully this has shown how you can quickly create courses to race on with your friends, and tailor tracks to your gaming group. Both of these tracks would work well for 2-3 players, although with 3 we would probably be a little less generous with the items.
In the coming weeks we will be sharing more crash courses on the Unplugged blog from Joyride co-designer Pete Ward, so stay tuned and happy racing!
Looking to still pre-order Joyride? Now is your last chance, so head over here!