Games like Drift Hunters

What Drift Hunters gets right

Drift Hunters is a free 3D drift game by Studionum43, built in Unity, that runs in a browser tab. You drive from a chase camera behind the car, score points for every drift, and spend them in a garage of mostly Japanese and European drift cars: buy a car, upgrade it, and tune things like turbo, brake balance, camber and offset. Its tracks range from wide drift parks to tight mountain roads.

That loop has four parts, and most people love one of them more than the others:

• The garage: collecting and tuning cars.
• The feel: holding a long, smooth slide from a camera behind the car.
• The access: free, in a browser, nothing to install.
• The short sessions: two minutes of drifting between other things.

So the honest answer to "what is like Drift Hunters" depends on which part you mean. Each pick below says which one it matches.

1. CarX Drift Racing Online (PC, consoles · paid)

Matches: the garage and the feel, turned up. If Drift Hunters left you wanting more cars, deeper tuning and other people to drift with, this is the natural next step. CarX came out on Steam in 2017 and later on PlayStation, Xbox and Switch. It has a large garage, detailed tuning and visual customisation, many tracks, and online lobbies where you drift in tandem with other players. The CarX games on phones (CarX Drift Racing 2) are free with in-app purchases.

Play it if: Drift Hunters was a gateway and you want the full hobby. Skip it if: you need it free and in a browser.

2. FR Legends (iOS, Android · free)

Matches: the garage and the short sessions, on your phone. A mobile drift game with chunky, stylised cars, lots of parts and an editor for your own livery. Its signature mode is the tandem battle: you lead and then chase an AI driver, and you are judged on line, angle and style the way a real drift competition does it. It is free with in-app purchases.

Play it if: you want Drift Hunters' garage in your pocket. Skip it if: you play on a computer.

3. DRIFTIT (browser · free)

Matches: the access and the short sessions, with a different feel. This is ours. DRIFTIT runs in any desktop browser with nothing to install, and a run starts in a few seconds. The big difference from Drift Hunters is the camera: you look down on the car from high above, so you see the whole corner and the angle of the car at once. If you miss the view from behind, press C (or X on a gamepad) for a chase camera.

There is one car and no garage. Instead there are 20 hand-built tracks across five worlds, each a three-lap time attack against a target time set by a bot driving the same physics. A drift score with a multiplier up to ×10 rewards staying sideways, your best run rides along as a ghost, and every track has an online leaderboard (sign in with X to put your @handle on it). All tracks are open from the start, plus a free-roam playground with cones.

Play it if: you liked Drift Hunters because it was free and instant, and you want to race a clock and other players instead of earning cash. Skip it if: the garage was the point: we have no car list, no tuning and no upgrades. It also needs a keyboard or gamepad; there are no touch controls, so it does not work on a phone.

Play DRIFTIT free

4. Assetto Corsa (PC · paid)

Matches: the feel, taken all the way to simulation. Kunos Simulazioni's 2014 racing sim is not a drift game out of the box, but its physics and its huge modding scene made it the home of PC sim drifting: community cars, Japanese mountain roads and drift servers. Expect a learning curve, and a wheel helps a lot.

Play it if: you want to know how real drifting feels and you have a PC (ideally a wheel). Skip it if: you want to pick it up for five minutes.

5. Absolute Drift (PC, consoles, mobile · paid)

Matches: the feel, from above. Funselektor's minimalist 2015 game is the classic of top-down drifting: clean white worlds, a car built to slide, and events scored on style. It is the game that made us want to build DRIFTIT, and we wrote a whole list of games like Absolute Drift. If the top-down camera is new to you, our explainer on why top-down drift games work covers how to steer when the car drives down the screen.

Play it if: you liked the sliding more than the cars. Skip it if: you want a garage.

6. Drift Boss (browser, mobile · free)

Matches: the access and the short sessions, nothing else. It sits next to Drift Hunters on every browser-game portal, so it is worth saying plainly: Drift Boss is a one-button timing game. The car drives itself along a path of blocks in the air, and you hold to turn at corners. Relaxing, good with one finger, not a drift game in the car-control sense.

Play it if: you are on a phone and have one hand free. Skip it if: you want to learn car control. If you came from Drift Boss, see games like Drift Boss.

Which one to play next

The skill carries over

Whatever you play next, drifting is the same idea everywhere: get the rear to step out (handbrake, a lift of the throttle or a flick of the wheel), catch it with counter-steer, and hold the angle with the throttle. The camera changes how it looks, not how it works. Our guide to drifting on a keyboard goes through it step by step, and the track guides show every DRIFTIT corner with its radius, if you want a place to practise. The Oval is the easiest start; Tight is where the handbrake earns its keep.

Quick answers

Is there a free Drift Hunters alternative in the browser? Yes: DRIFTIT, if you are fine with one car and a top-down camera. The other well-known free browser option, Drift Boss, is a timing game rather than a drift game.

Which game is closest to Drift Hunters with more content? CarX Drift Racing Online: the same garage-and-tuning loop, much deeper, with online lobbies. It costs money.

Is there one for phones? FR Legends. DRIFTIT is made for a keyboard or a gamepad and has no touch controls.