How to play Apex Drawn
Draw a racetrack with your finger or mouse, and a moment later you are driving it in 3D. This guide covers everything: drawing a good circuit, the controls, every mode, and how to find time on a lap.
1. Drawing a circuit
The drawing board is a bird's-eye view of an empty piece of land. Draw a line with your mouse or finger and keep going until you come back to where you began: the moment the loop closes it becomes a circuit, with tarmac, kerbs on the corners, barriers, a start gantry and scenery around it. You can drive it straight away.
Then shape it. The sliders on the board set:
- Width - how wide the tarmac is. A narrow track is harder to overtake on and makes every corner feel quicker.
- Hills - how much the land rises and falls. With hills on, the track follows the ground: crests, dips and blind corners over the top of a rise.
- Smoothness - how much your drawn line is smoothed into flowing curves. Turn it down to keep sharp hairpins exactly as you drew them; turn it up for sweeping, fast corners.
- Barrier distance - how much run-off there is before the barriers, from walls on the very edge of the road (no room for mistakes) to 30 m of grass.
You can also bank individual corners so the road tilts into the turn, like an oval or a velodrome; a banked corner can be taken much faster than a flat one. Hills & jumps lets you raise and lower the track yourself for crests and jumps, and the scenery tools let you place trees, grandstands and other objects, then move, turn and resize each one with its handles. Themes change the whole landscape around the circuit - the countryside, the alpine, and more.
What makes a good circuit
- Mix the speeds. A lap of nothing but hairpins is slow and tiring; a lap of nothing but fast curves is easy. The best circuits put a slow corner at the end of a long straight (somewhere to brake and overtake) and a quick sequence of bends somewhere else to test the car's balance.
- Put a straight before the hardest braking zone. That is where overtaking happens in multiplayer races.
- Link corners. Two bends close together, one left and one right (an "S" or esses), mean the line through the first sets up the second - which is where skill shows.
- Don't cross yourself by accident. If your circuit passes over itself, it builds a bridge; that is a feature, but make sure it is the crossing you meant.
- Try it in more than one car. A corner that is easy in the GT can be a real test in the Formula car.
Sign in (accounts are free) and you can save your circuits to race again on any device, and share them so others can race your layout and set times on it.
2. Controls
Keyboard
| Key | What it does |
|---|---|
| W or ↑ | Accelerate |
| S or ↓ | Brake - hold it to lock the rear wheels |
| A D or ← → | Steer |
| R | Recover - puts the car back on the track if you are stuck or spun off |
| R R | Press twice to restart the lap |
| C | Change camera |
| M | Sound on or off |
| Esc | Pause menu |
Controller
Plug in or pair an Xbox, PlayStation or Nintendo controller - on a computer or a phone - and it plays the whole game. Right trigger to accelerate, left trigger to brake, right stick to steer, Start to pause. In the menus the d-pad moves between buttons, A presses and B goes back. On the drawing board, hold the right trigger and move the left stick to draw. Triggers are analogue, so you can feed the throttle in gently out of a slow corner - something a keyboard can't do.
Phone and tablet
Apex Drawn works in the browser on iPhone and Android. Hold the phone sideways. Steering is under your left thumb and the pedals are under your right. Draw circuits with your finger. You can add the game to your home screen to play it full screen like an app.
3. The cars
- GT - grip and pace; the all-rounder, and the best car to learn a circuit in.
- Formula - a single-seater, the fastest of the four and the twitchiest. Brakes very late and turns in sharply, but it punishes a clumsy input.
- Kart - no top speed but enormous grip. Made for the kart circuits.
- Hatchback - soft and forgiving, never quite settled. Slow, but a lot of fun to drive on the limit.
Every car keeps its own best lap on every circuit, so each car has its own leaderboard. More cars can be unlocked through the Apex Pass.
4. Game modes
Draw & drive
Your own circuit, as many laps as you like. Each lap is split into sectors, and you can race a ghost of your best lap to see exactly where you are gaining and losing time.
Daily time trial
One circuit a day, the same for everyone in the world, in the same car. Set your best lap before the day ends to see where you rank globally, and chase the ghost of a faster driver. The top ten each day win prizes.
Multiplayer
Host a party and share the four-letter code with your friends. Up to eight players race together on your circuit, with live positions, name tags and a running order. The host decides whether cars collide or drive through each other (ghosting). You can join a race that has already started.
Real circuits
Race real British circuits, traced from their real layouts. Four are free today - Brands Hatch Indy, Cadwell Park, Silverstone National and Buckmore Park - and more are coming. See the full list of circuits with maps and lap guides.
Rally stage
A point-to-point stage from A to B on tarmac, dirt or snow. Draw your own or have one made for you - fast, twisty or full of hairpins - and beat the rivals' times one at a time.
Drag race
Side by side, a quarter of a mile, against the lights. The five red lights come on, then go green after a random pause - so you can't guess it. Go too early and it's a false start. Your reaction time is measured to the thousandth of a second, and the quickest reactions of the day go on their own leaderboard.
5. How to go faster
- Brake in a straight line. Do your braking before you turn. Braking and steering hard at the same time asks the tyres for more grip than they have, and the car slides wide.
- Slow in, fast out. Arrive at a corner a little slower than feels necessary, and get back on the throttle early. Time lost on the way in is a few hundredths; a good exit gains you speed all the way down the next straight.
- Use all the road. Start a corner on the outside edge, clip the inside (the apex), and let the car run back out to the outside on the exit. The wider the arc, the faster you can take it.
- Late apex for the slow corners. In a hairpin, turn in later than you think and aim for an apex past the middle of the corner. It straightens the exit, which is where the time is.
- Smooth hands. Every sudden steering movement scrubs speed. On a controller or phone, small inputs are quicker than big ones.
- Watch the sectors. The split times tell you which part of the lap you are losing time in. Work on one sector at a time.
- Chase a ghost. Racing your own best lap - or someone faster's on the daily - shows you exactly where they brake and turn in.
6. Taking your circuit into BeamNG.drive or Assetto Corsa
On a laptop or PC, signed in, press Export on the drawing board and pick the game. Your circuit - or a real one from the library - downloads as a track for that game, with its hills, kerbs, barriers and scenery. Unzip it into the game's mods or content folder and it appears in the track list. Your first four exports are free.