What it is
Endless procedural hills, a garage of vehicles rendered from Kenney's CC0 car kit, upgrades and mods, nitro, ranks earned through achievements, and cup races against ghosts of real runs. Coins come from driving. The game never asks for money, an account, or your attention between runs.
Twelve maps, each its own place
Countryside, Desert, a Junkyard, Forest, Beach, San Francisco, Mountains, Arctic, an Amusement park, the Moon, Boston and Jupiter, opened in order with map tokens. Every map has its own set pieces: a barn to drive through, a pyramid passage, ski jumps, lunar landers, Lombard Street, a loop-the-loop, a yard crane whose arm is a jump, a car crusher to time, a suspension bridge with a drivable cable.
Sunday drive
No crashes, no coins, fuel cans at a steady gap: pick a hill level from 1 to 10 and drive for as long as you like while the sun crosses the sky, sets, and the stars and headlights come out.
Head-to-head on your Wi-Fi
In every build but the browser one. One player picks the map and hosts; everyone else on the network gets the invite in their garage. The race starts when every player has pressed Ready. Each device drives its own car and the others ride along as live ghosts, so lag never touches your driving.
Ghost races
Seven to eleven tracks per map: four plain ones, from a 240 m sprint to a 760 m haul, and one around each of the map's set pieces. Every finish is recorded, and you race the runs closest to your own time: other people's first, then your own past selves.
Your data stays yours
Saves live on the device. Optional sync goes through your own Nextcloud. Sharing race history sends only a display name, the car, the time and the path; the browser version shares with this site by default, the Android and desktop builds only when you switch it on.
Why Hillbound?
The hill never ends and the car keeps going up it. Twelve ranks stand between Rookie and the top one, which is what the hill makes of you.
Free software
GPL-3.0-or-later. The vehicles are Kenney's models; everything else on screen is drawn by code. The game speaks English, German and Spanish; translations, maps and vehicles are welcome.
Maps
Leaderboards
| # | Driver | Time | Car | When |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Loading… | ||||
Times come from players who switched on "Share race history" in the game's settings. Runs are kept per game version.
Get it
Every build is the same game, except that the browser build has no Nextcloud sync and no head-to-head racing. Head-to-head is in all the others: the Android, TV, Windows, macOS and Linux builds race each other on the same Wi-Fi, in any mix. It works by the devices finding one another on the local network and then talking to each other directly, and a web page is allowed to do neither: a browser lets a page talk to web servers and nothing else, so it can neither hear a nearby player's invite nor connect to their device. Getting round that would mean sending every race through a server, and Hillbound keeps a race between the people in the room. Ghost races and the leaderboards work everywhere, the browser included.
Browser
Play here. Keyboard: arrows or WASD, Shift for nitro, Ctrl for jump. Saves stay in this browser; Nextcloud sync is not available in the browser build.
Android
Download the APK (64-bit, for any recent tablet or phone) and allow installs from this source. Older devices, and Android TV boxes and Fire TV sticks, which run a 32-bit system, take the 32-bit APK: on a TV, sideload it with the Downloader app from the short address hillbound.org/apk32, then the remote's D-pad drives, or pair a controller.
Windows
Download for Windows (64-bit). Unzip and run hillbound.exe. The build is not signed, so Windows warns about an unknown publisher the first time: choose More info, then Run anyway. Keyboard: arrows or WASD, Shift for nitro, Ctrl for jump.
macOS
Download for macOS (Apple silicon and Intel). Unzip, then right-click the app and choose Open the first time, because it is not notarized with Apple.