Armed with a bundle of extra track pieces and cars, I set to work building a track with a wild jump, a plus-sign intersection, and plenty of curves. Slapping together a simple track takes less than 5 minutes, and it’s easy to add elements to an existing track just by swapping pieces out. Building an elaborate home track for four-player showdowns will easily cost hundreds of extra dollars beyond your initial purchase, but I figured expansion was the key to prolonging and amplifying the Anki Overdrive experience. Ditching mobile devices for controllers removes a barrier to entry for families that don't have a tablet or phone for every child who wants to play, but it makes the game less exciting. The more elaborate track pieces and cars I threw into Anki, the more they randomly zipped off the course and the less fun I had.

Anki Overdrive Review | Trusted Reviews Anki Overdrive Review | Trusted Reviews

Anki’s little sprinters are impressively speedy as they auto-accelerate around the tracks, constantly scanning the infrared markings on the pieces to maintain position as they zip along. Instead of moving a slider up or down to change the speed of your Supertruck, you press down on a virtual accelerator pedal. The Supertrucks use a slightly different driving UI and add an interesting high-speed mode you won't find on the cars.

There’s so much variety in here, and the expansions that have been made available since launch have taken it to a whole new level. In fact, my 2-year-old son—who is now properly obsessed with Anki (“Go get car mats, daddy”)—put his train track-building skills to immediate use and started building courses with little assistance. It’s pulse-pounding play, made possible through state-of-the-art tech and it's an experience unlike anything else.

Anki Overdrive Starter Kit Review: Vroom - The Spruce

The more track components I added, the more likely cars were to go off-track, flip over, or wind up stuck on a plastic lip. A great game that brings the joy of Scalextric into the digital age – and throws in a whole new world of Mad Max fun.Your phone vibrates, the cars light up and slow down, and it gives the game a Mario Kart-esque allure. It’s also about so much more than racing, with virtual weaponry for disabling your opponents and earning cash to upgrade your vehicle.

Anki Overdrive Review: Supertrucks Add to Racing Fun Anki Overdrive Review: Supertrucks Add to Racing Fun

The One Shot modifier gives each player and their driver a ‘golden gun’, which, with a single well-aimed shot, can take out an opponent in an instant. You use the Overdrive app to control your car, tilting your mobile device to the left or right to change lanes, moving an on-screen slider to speed up or slow down and hitting on-screen buttons to fire weapons.If the name isn’t a dead giveaway, Anki Overdrive takes the previous experience to awesome new levels. Other weapons might stall you on the track for a couple seconds, weaken your armor against further attacks, or show your momentum with machine gun fire.

Anki Overdrive review: Robot race cars are as cool as they Anki Overdrive review: Robot race cars are as cool as they

With his technical knowledge and passion for testing, Avram developed many real-world benchmarks, including our laptop battery test. The only problem is that you’ll get so addicted that you’ll want to keep building bigger tracks and want all the vehicles – and that lot doesn’t come cheap. If you hold down the accelerator until the bar fills up, you can hit a button to enter "Rage Mode," where the truck's lights start blinking and it goes a lot faster for a minute or two, potentially allowing you to pass your opponents. I. gives you complete control over the cars so they can and do go off track if you steer them too quickly.The starter kit includes 2 robotic supercars, 6 curved track pieces, 4 straight track pieces, 2 riser pieces, 1 4-car charging system, and 1 tire cleaner. You have to slide a series of paper tabs into each other, and if you don't do it properly, the pieces of lightweight cardboard road can bubble up, giving you an uneven racing surface. You can shoot "hazards," such as oil spills, at your opponents, but the cars don't light up and your only indicator that you've hit your opponent is the controller, which gives a running audio commentary, telling you so.