Hill Climb Havoc

Off-road racing is pretty tough, both on the vehicles and on the drivers. Although the speeds are significantly lower than in tarmac races, the risk of an accident is a tad greater most of the time, mainly because the terrain is trickier. Climbing steep hills can be a major challenge, especially if the composition of the soil changes along the way.

Hill Climb Havoc is a simple racing game in which you have only one goal: climb the hill as quickly as you can. The controls are incredibly simple, the landscape is not much to look at and the graphics are pretty basic as well, but the concept is actually quite intriguing. In fact, the game could hit the jackpot if more content is added in the future.

As mentioned above, the controls are very simple and intuitive, since your only task is to use the mouse to drag a slider back and forth. This slider is actually the acceleration, and you have to keep changing it to keep in tune with the angle of the ascent, as well as the surface you are driving on. It may seem simple, but there’s always more you can do to get a better time.

Even if the idea is great, it must be mentioned that the actual game is very short and disappointing when it comes to content. There is only one track and a single vehicle, which severely limits replayability. On the other hand, you can keep playing for a while even in this state, which means that the game shows tremendous potential, if only it featured more content.

As for the graphics, you play from a forced 2.5D perspective, which means that you cannot control the camera or anything else about the point of view. The landscapes look pretty nifty, but the level design is not very imaginative. You don’t have much time to admire the scenery anyway, but it would be nice to see some variety at least.

In the end, Hill Climb Havoc can be molded into a much more successful game, at least if more content is added and the challenge is increased a little bit. Until then, even this short experience is worthy of a try.