The ‘PitchCar’ Community Will Flick Its Way Into Your Heart
PitchCar is a simple game with a simple premise that has built a huge community with some incredibly impressive track builds!
What is so universally satisfying about flicking something? A crumpled-up piece of paper, a can tab, a chunky breadcrumb, it doesn’t matter. Lining up the shot, the excitement of anticipation before the flick, and that oh-so-satisfying moment of impact, with the gleeful joy of seeing your shot fly through the air. Flicking stuff is just great.
That must have been the thought process behind the creators of PitchCar.
Pitchcar Overview
PitchCar was originally released in 1995 and features very simple rules and mechanics. Simply put, it’s a competitive racing game where players take turns to flick their cars to the finish line. The main draw of PitchCar (beyond the flicking) is building the track. The game comes with a bunch of track pieces that all fit together like a puzzle, so players can build entirely new tracks for each game.
The only real rule to know is the player in the lead takes the first shot each round. Falling off the track or flipping over costs you a turn and knocking another player off the track costs you a turn. And that’s kind of it.
Setup is Half the Fun
The game also comes with railings that slot into the track pieces to help with banked shots and sharp turns. But that’s just the base game. PitchCar is still very much going strong and putting out expansions, with the 3 most recent all coming out in 2019.
Of course, they have a loop-de-loop. What racetrack is complete without one?! But that’s not all.
Multi-level tracks!
There are so many possibilities here and people far more creative than me have taken these tracks and built some truly impressive courses.
Or maybe you want something with a little more twists and turns to it. Well, no problem.
Or maybe you’re the sort of person who wants to build their own custom track pieces. You’re in good company.
Or maybe you see the obvious parallels to Mario Kart and want to solidify those connections even further with custom cars, dice, and rules.
Final Thoughts
As an outsider looking in, it is so obvious this is a game with a huge and great community of fans who are really passionate about this game. And seeing something like that is just about my favorite thing in the world, second to a really well-cooked marshmallow, but that isn’t really comparable. It makes me genuinely so happy to see custom builds and rules put into a game.
There obviously isn’t a whole lot of gameplay to cover with a game like this, but that’s not the point here. Sometimes it’s just nice to get a glimpse into the passion projects of a community and enjoy that for what it is.
