Asphalt Assault

In the spirit of the classic top-down spy-car chase.

A top-down spy-car chase. You drive a silver car with a blue stripe up an endless highway, and Mr. Pesar's black getaway cars pull in ahead of you, each with a character on a plate on its roof.

How it plays

Type the character on a getaway car and you swerve into its lane and fire. Let one reach your bumper and you crash, which costs a life. Civilian cars carry nothing, so there is never anything to shoot by mistake; your car steers round them by itself.

The Oil Van

Now and then the Oil Van pulls in with a whole word on its side, built only from characters you have already met. Type the word and it's on your side: it drives lane to lane, dropping an oil slick out the back in each lane where a getaway car is coming, and every car that runs over the oil spins out. Careful, though — the oil stays on the road, and if you're in that lane when it reaches you, you spin out too. It won't cost a life, but you can't type while you spin. Miss the van's word and it just drives on: no harm done, but no oil either.

Roads and rivers

Six scenes track your tier: a country highway, a coast road, a river run, the city at night, mangroves at dusk and Mr. Pesar's causeway for the word rounds. On the two rivers your car is a speedboat. A car takes six and a half seconds to close in at level one and under three at the fastest, and a level lasts about twenty seconds.