About Facet Circuit
A flat-shaded low-poly time trial, drawn in the browser by a renderer written for this portal — no engine, no library, no network request of any kind. You take one standing lap of a circuit against a translucent ghost of your own best, with a live delta on the head-up display and three sector splits telling you where the time went. There is no rival car, no upgrade that makes the chassis faster and no unlock that makes a corner easier: the only thing that ever improves is you. Throttle is automatic and the brake is the only pedal, so the whole game lives at the braking point — and the restart is instantaneous, which is what turns "I got that corner wrong" into another attempt rather than a menu. Four circuits, from a wide ring with two long straights to a narrow spine that never stops turning, each with a gold time measured by driving it. Your best lap is saved as a ghost and survives a closed tab.
How to play
- Pick a circuit. Only Sable Ring is open at first; a bronze medal on one circuit unlocks the next.
- Start from a standstill on the line. The car accelerates by itself, so you only steer and brake.
- Brake before each corner, then steer through it. Kerbs and grass slow you, and hitting a barrier cuts your speed roughly in half.
- Watch the live gap to your ghost and the three sector markers to see where you gained or lost time.
- Cross the line to finish the lap and read the card: time, medal, gap to your best and coins. Press Again to go straight back to the start.
Tips
- Brake once, early. Speed through a corner is capped by grip, so steering harder past that limit does nothing. One firm brake before turn-in beats steering out of a late entry.
- Stay off the grass. Grass has about a third of the tarmac's grip and far more drag, and the kerbs are slower too. Running wide on an exit usually costs more than a slightly slower entry.
- Keep it clean. A lap with no barrier contact pays 15 extra coins, and a barrier hit throws away almost half your speed. Running along a wall bleeds speed too.
- Use the sectors. Each lap is split into thirds. When a sector marker shows you losing time, that third is where to change your braking point on the next attempt,.
- Let go on the exit. With no steering input the car gently straightens towards the direction of the track, so lifting your thumb out of a corner is safer than holding a correction too long.
Read the full Facet Circuit guide (5 min read)
From the developer
Facet Circuit is a low-poly time trial I built on 10 September: one flying lap of a circuit against a ghost of your own best, with a live time gap on screen and three sector splits that tell you where the time went. It was also the first game on the small 3D renderer I wrote for this site.
I chose a hand-written WebGL renderer over three.js on measured size. three.js is about 186 KB compressed, while my engine is 22 KB and the finished game ships at about 66 KB, less than half the library alone. Medal times come from a headless driver model rather than guesswork.
I checked rendering by reading pixels back rather than trusting the absence of errors, which is how three silent bugs turned up before release. A fourth, prisms built inside out, only showed later that day when Skyweave used the same code for mountains, and I fixed it in the shared engine. On 14 September I added trackside scenery from Synty Studios' POLYGON Prototype and Battle Royale packs, with their colours baked into the models so no textures ship, and checked that lap times did not change on any of the four circuits.
Son Hoang, who made Facet Circuit
Update history
- Added music: Battle Theme 2 from Andrew Sitkov Music's FREE Battle Music Pack.
- Removed the 'Watch a video' buttons, which could never pay out here; finishes cost the same coins.
- Real loading bar, and every screen fits phones, tablets and desktops without scrolling.
- Trackside scenery from Synty models: tyre stacks, braking boards, marshal towers, flags, floodlights, tents, cones, trees and rocks. Lap times are unchanged.
- Text now scales with the screen; on a laptop the smallest labels had been 8 pixels.
- First version: one flying lap against a ghost of your best, with a live time gap and three sector splits, on four circuits.
Questions
Does Facet Circuit save my progress?
Yes, in your browser's local storage. It keeps your coins, bought paint finishes, unlocked circuits, and for each circuit your best lap, its sector splits, the ghost of that lap, your best medal and your lap count. Erase progress on the title screen clears it.
Can I play it on a phone?
Yes. On a touchscreen, left and right pads under your left thumb steer and a brake pad sits under your right. Throttle is automatic, and the pause button offers Restart lap.
What do coins buy?
Only paint. Six chassis finishes cost from 120 to 650 coins. Nothing makes the car faster: coins come from finishing laps, medals, personal bests and clean laps.
Is there an ending?
There is no final race. The four circuits unlock in order; the aim is a gold medal on each circuit, then beating the ghost of your own best lap.
