By touch: put your left thumb down anywhere on the left half of the screen and slide it sideways to steer — the further, the more lock, and it comes back straight wherever you let it go. GAS and BRAKE are on the right (hold BRAKE to reverse; slide a thumb from one to the other), HB is the handbrake. In the corner, II pauses, ↺ puts you back on the road and CAM changes the view. Sound, music, the ghost and the steering are in SETTINGS.
W accelerates, S brakes and reverses, A/D steer. SPACE is the handbrake — tap it into a corner to rotate the car, hold it and you will spin. Grip is much lower off the tarmac, and hills matter: you lose speed climbing and gain it falling. Most bends can be taken flat out; the hairpins up on the mountain cannot — brake before them, or throw it in on the handbrake. Crests and jumps take you off the ground: land straight. Where a road crosses itself, one side goes over on a flyover. THE COUNTY has no laps and no clock: nine and a half kilometres of town, coast, farms, forest and mountains, built round you as you drive — follow the roads, or leave them. Stop at a depot's board for work; stop on a race's start line, where its board says STOP HERE TO RACE, to race it.
RACE THE FIELD puts you at the back of the grid, behind five others: three laps, and the race is getting past them. TIME TRIAL is you alone against the ghost of your best lap (G hides it). Either way, take every gate in order — each shows how far up or down you are on your best lap — and beat the stage's lap times for bronze, silver and gold. The railings, walls and houses will stop you; the water will not hold you — R puts you back on the road. T on the title switches mode, C camera, V livery, M mutes, N music, [ ] tune the steering, Q held looks back.
WHAT THE GARAGE BOLTS ON. On the red planet THE OUTPOST welds kit onto the car, and what fires has a key of its own: F held burns with the flamers (let go when they run hot), X drops a mine behind you, B fires the mortar at the nearest flier or a raider 40 to 420 m off, and H throws the harpoon at the nearest one behind you — H again cuts it. SELENITE's armoury has its own: E the repulsor, Z the arc lance, L the grav anchor, and a pulse turret that fires by itself. The ram bar, the spikes, the cage and the plates have no key: you fight with them by driving — nose first into them with the ram bar, letting them shove a spiked flank. Whatever is on the car is listed bottom left with its key (by touch, those are the buttons to press), and K shows them all.
SHARING A PLACE. While you drive in a world the address bar follows you — ?w=county&at=1600,460,0, the world, where you are in metres and the way you are facing. Copy it and whoever opens it starts exactly there, which is how to show somebody what you have found. A place can be named instead of measured: ?at=LANTERN ISLE, or any name the pause map puts on the map.