Shadeburn Racer

Shadeburn Racer is a racing game about speed and crashes. Eight cars on the grid, one rule: get to the line first, or be the last car still running.

Every race builds a new track from a seed: ovals, twisty knots, figure eights, and dual-level circuits with bridges. Drive them through farmland, desert dunes, mountain passes, old town streets, a neon downtown, a container port and the snowbound tundra. In the rain, at night, in a dust storm, or under the polar aurora.

Cars bend and break. Doors and bonnets tear off, glass shatters, and a damaged engine or a bent axle changes how the car drives. In the derby arena that is the whole point.

Features

• Circuit races with 8 cars, and demolition derbies with 6
• A championship: three cups, races and derbies, points, prize money to upgrade cars
• A garage: 9 parts with 4 levels each, paid for with race winnings
• Endless procedural tracks in 5 classes; save the ones you like
• 7 locations and 8 kinds of weather, from dust storms to the aurora
• A destructible world, and animals that do not like cars on their land
• Multiplayer for up to 8: on your local network (already available ), or online (in future)
• Keyboard or game controller
• A soundtrack of rock and folk, composed by the game as you play
• Beware of bears
• UFO (saucer)

Made differently

This is a sort of experiment. 

There is no game engine inside. Shadeburn Racer is written in Free Pascal and draws with Metal directly. The cars, tracks, towns, the font and the music are all made by code. The whole game is a 9 MB download and runs natively on Apple Silicon.

Requirements

• A Mac with Apple Silicon (M1 or newer)
• macOS 13 Ventura or later
• Intel Macs are not supported

Controls

Keyboard: WASD or arrows to drive, Space handbrake, Left Shift nitro, C camera, R back on the track, Tab standings, Esc pause.
Controller: RT/LT throttle and brake, left stick steer, A nitro, B handbrake, Y camera, X standings, View back on the track, Start pause.

Install

Open the DMG and drag Shadeburn Racer to Applications. The app is signed and notarized by Apple. The first time you open the multiplayer page, macOS asks for access to the local network: allow it to find games on your network.

Credits

Shadeburn Racer © 2026 G. Pletnev with AI team. Cars, tracks, towns, font and music are made by code. Built with Free Pascal, SDL2 and Metal.

Sound
Engine: "Racing car engine sound loops" by domasx2 — CC0
Engine: "Car Engine Loop 96kHz, 4s" by Iwan Gabovitch (qubodup) — CC BY 3.0
Tyres: "Car tire squeal skid loop" by Tom Haigh (audible-edge), loop edit by Iwan Gabovitch (qubodup) — CC BY 3.0
Impacts: "100 CC0 metal and wood SFX" by rubberduck — CC0
All from OpenGameArt.org.

Music instruments
Recordings by Karoryfer Samples / D. Smolken — CC0: Black And Green Guitars, Growlybass, Big Rusty Drums, Horse Pulse, and Karoryfer x bigcat cello played by Kamila Borowiak. From github.com/sfzinstruments. The game writes (generates) the tunes as it plays.

CC BY 3.0: creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0 — the recordings are filtered, resampled, looped and mixed. Their authors do not endorse this game.