Monster Tracks Landing Guide: Air Control, Bridges and Crashes

Two pedals, a handful of keys

Monster Tracks has only two inputs: go and brake. The two grey pedals drawn at the bottom of the frame show them, with the brake on the left and the gas on the right, and the key hints printed beside them tell you the main bindings. In the build on this site every one of these works:

The run starts as soon as the game loads, with the truck parked against a rock wall on the left. Reversing simply backs you into that wall, so there is nothing to find behind you.

What the pedals do in the air

When we kept the gas held through a jump, the truck kept rotating backward, nose up, and on a long jump it went all the way over onto its roof. When we switched to the brake in mid-air, the nose dropped and the truck tipped forward instead. Letting go of both pedals did not stop the rotation either. So the pedals still matter once the wheels leave the ground: gas lifts the nose, brake drops it, and a landing is a matter of picking the right one and letting go in time.

A rule that follows from this: do not cross a crest with the gas floored unless you want the air. If the truck is already pitching up as it leaves the ground, a short press of the brake brings the nose back down, and releasing it early stops it from overshooting into a nose-first landing.

What ends a run

There are no lives and no checkpoints. Landing on the roof ends the run at once: the camera zooms in, the wheels come off the chassis, and the Upgrades screen appears with a Retry button. The game's script also contains separate checks named Drown and Fall out, which fits what the track shows: some stretches are wooden plank bridges laid over water, with nothing under them but the river.

Getting over the plank bridges

The bridges are where most of our test runs ended. The truck usually reaches one at speed after a climb, gets thrown up by the bridge's raised end, and lands on the uneven planks. Three habits helped:

• Ease off the gas on the slope before the bridge, so the truck reaches the planks with its wheels on them instead of in the air.
• If you do get launched, use the brake in the air to stop the backward roll before the truck comes down on the boards.
• Once all four wheels are on the bridge, go back to steady gas. The planks are bumpy, and stopping halfway gives the truck time to rock.

The track is different every run

Do not try to learn the course by heart. The track is built from pieces as you drive, and in our runs the first bridge came at a different point each time and the hills before it had different shapes. What carries over between runs is technique, the coins you have collected and the upgrades you buy with them, not knowledge of a fixed layout.

The number at the top right climbs as you move forward, so a run that ends on the first bridge scores low no matter how fast you were going. Reaching the next stretch of road is worth more than speed.