Steam · Q1 2027
From high above: a car drifting through a gravel S-bend beside a lake in low evening sun, a plume of dust behind it

Driftlands — a top-down drift and rally racing game. Sideways is faster.

A top-down drift and rally racing game in the making. Country roads, a full field of rivals, weather that rolls in mid-stage, and car physics that never fakes a slide.

See the roadbook

Alpha Work in progress SteamQ1 2027

0.40R4 long loose gravel

The slide is real

Every car is simulated wheel by wheel. Weight moves forward when you brake and the rear goes light, tyres find grip and lose it, and the drift that follows is the one the physics produced. What the wheels do on screen is what the simulation did.

Gravel lets go early and gives it back. Tarmac bites. Snow packs under the tyres, and ice gives you almost nothing to steer with. Hit a fence or a rail and the car keeps the dent.

  • Gravel
  • Tarmac
  • Grass
  • Snow
  • Ice
A car sideways out of a gravel bend between guardrails, dust and its shadow thrown across the road, a pack behind A rally hatchback sliding on a snowy road, snow spraying from its wheels, a rival beside it

1.05L3 over crest don't cut

Never alone on the road

A full field starts behind you, beside you and in front of you. Rivals take their own lines, drift when the bend asks for it and lean on you when there is no room. The fast way past is usually through their dust.

Three cars fighting through a forest bend at dusk, long shadows of the pines across the gravel Two cars sliding on a ploughed winter road, a wave of snow behind one of them Two cars side by side between birches in low sun, sparks where one scrapes the other Low behind two coupes racing nose to tail down a dusty road at dusk

1.70R5 into village caution, ditch

Roads that go somewhere

No circuits. Hand-built country instead, from summer dust on forest gravel to winter roads across the ice, and every road in it is made to be drifted. More of them are on the way.

A tarmac road winding between yellow fields, farmhouses and birches, a pack of cars on it Two cars crossing a wooden bridge over a lake in low sun High over a forest: a gravel road with guardrails curving through the pines, the field strung along it A winter road ploughed across a frozen lake, two cars on it and their tracks curving away

2.35Caution weather coming

The sky changes the road

Light, rain and snow are part of the driving. Rain darkens the gravel and leaves puddles that tug at a wheel, night shrinks the road to your headlights, and snow buries the edges you were aiming for.

Midday: a pack sliding out of a gravel bend, dust rising Golden hour: a car drifting a forest hairpin, sparks flying, a dust plume in the low sun Dusk: a car sliding past a fence in a cloud of dust and stones, a rival ahead Night: a car drifting in its own headlights, gravel flying Snow: the field leaving a start gate on a ploughed winter road

2.85R2 hairpin into the garage

Cars from the back of the barn

Fictional classics from the sixties to the nineties, each with its own weight, power and balance, so each one slides its own way. Win races to earn the next one. The garage is still filling up.

The grid before the start: classic rally cars of different eras side by side on a forest gravel road
On the grid in the alpha build. The line-up will change before release.

3.20Flying finish keep it flat

Stop the clock, frame the shot

Photo mode freezes the race wherever you are: take the camera anywhere, set the lens, the colour and the sun, and keep the picture. Every picture on this page is from the alpha build, and all of it is still changing.

Night: headlights on a bridge over a dark blue river Low behind a car drifting a gravel road between birches in low sun A rally hatchback leaning into a slide on gravel, dust behind it A muscle coupe on a country road at dusk, long shadows across the fields A rally hatchback side on across the snow, ice crazed under its wheels A wide-body coupe drifting a dirt bend with a rival close behind

SteamQ1 2027

Be on the start line

The game is in alpha and changing every week. It comes to Steam in the first quarter of 2027, and its Steam page opens before that.