Racing

Racing is the core game mechanic of Desert Child. All of your activities ultimately revolve around winning races.

Racing Basics
A race is a one-on-one match between the player and a single opponent. The goal is usually to cross the finish line before your opponent, although jobs may alter this goal.

You only have direct control over your movement up and down, and you and your opponent have the same base speed. Staying ahead of your opponent requires you to gain speed, or for them to lose speed.

Gaining Speed
You can only gain speed by boosting. Boost automatically refills over time, or it can be manually recharged by shooting drones. Using all of your boost will cause you to actually lose speed however, so stop boosting once you get near the end of your reserves and the warning begins to flash.

You can also perform a quick boost dodge up or down by tapping the boost button while moving in the desired direction.

Losing Speed
There are a number of ways to lose speed:


 * Getting shot
 * The racer in the back has the opportunity to shoot at the person in the lead, causing them to lose speed if hit. Drones in front will also shoot at both players.


 * Crashing into obstacles or drones


 * Boosting for too long
 * Trying to use more boost than you actually have will cause you to lose speed. Even a little bit of this over-boosting can cause you to lose most of the speed you gained from a full charge of boost.

Ammo
Your bike's gun has a limited supply of ammunition. Once it is expended, it can be refilled by waiting for a supply truck to show up on the course, and boosting to nudge the rear of it. Alternatively, ramming into drones will sometimes provide a few rounds of ammunition, at the cost of losing some speed.