Racing · Arcade 3D

Highway Heat

Weave through rush-hour traffic at full throttle. Pass cars close to build your streak, fire nitro, and beat the clock from checkpoint to checkpoint as the sun goes down.

Traffic

∞ UnlimitedNo timer · own leaderboard · up to 200 XP

Touch: drag anywhere to steer · hold Brake · tap Nitro. Desktop: steer with the mouse or A / D / arrows · S brake · Space nitro · P pause

Overtake streak: every clean pass raises your multiplier up to ×5. A crash or scrape resets it
Near misses (CLOSE! / INSANE!) pay big and fill your nitro
Beat the heat: reach checkpoint gates for more time. Three crashes and you're out

About Highway Heat

Highway Heat is a 3D chase-camera highway racer. Your car speeds up on its own, and you weave through lanes of cars, vans and trucks from late afternoon into the neon night.

How to play

Pass cars cleanly to build an overtake streak; every five clean passes raise your multiplier, up to ×5.
Pass close for CLOSE! and INSANE! near-miss bonuses, which also fill your nitro. Open-road stretches let you use the oncoming lanes for double points.
Reach checkpoint gates to add time. The run ends when the clock hits zero or after three crashes.

Controls

Drag left or right to steer and hold Brake to slow down on touch screens; tap Nitro to boost. On desktop, steer with the mouse or A/D and arrow keys, brake with S or down, and press Space for nitro.

Good to know

Free to play, no account needed. Plays in any modern browser on phone, tablet or computer. Sign in to put your scores on the Highway Heat leaderboard.

More about Highway Heat

Highway Heat is about balancing speed and safety. The car accelerates by itself, so your decisions are where to go and how close to go: a gap between two cars is both an opportunity and a risk. It trains scanning ahead, spotting which cars are about to change lanes (the ones with blinkers on), and committing to a line before the gap closes.

A run is a race against a countdown. Each checkpoint gate you reach adds time to the clock, and the bonus gets a little smaller with every gate, so time keeps getting tighter. Meanwhile the traffic gets denser and faster. The scenery moves from late afternoon into night, and on stretches where the barrier ends, the oncoming lanes become available at double points for anyone brave enough to use them.

Scoring and progress

Clean overtakes build a streak, and the multiplier rises every five passes in a row, from ×1 to ×5. CLOSE! passes within 1 meter of a car and INSANE! within 40 centimeters, and both pay bonuses that are worth more at higher speeds. In open-road sections, oncoming lanes double all points. A side scrape costs your streak but not a car. Easy, Medium and Hard each keep a best, and the grade runs from D to S, with S requiring 16,000 points and no crashes.

Common questions

How does a run end?
A run ends when the clock reaches zero or when you have crashed three times. A side scrape only costs your streak, not a car.

What does the Unlimited switch do?
Unlimited removes the timer and has its own leaderboard. In that mode you drive until you crash out or end the run yourself, and XP is capped at 200.

What does the difficulty setting change?
It changes how many cars are on the road, how fast they go, how often drivers change lanes, how long their blinkers warn you and how much time each checkpoint gate gives.

Tips and strategy

Look two or three cars ahead, not just at the car in front. Pick the lane that stays open for the longest time instead of the lane that is open right now.
Watch for blinkers. A car that is signaling will move into your lane soon, so leave that lane early or slip by before it moves.
Take near misses when the road is clear. CLOSE! and INSANE! bonuses fill your nitro, which has three charges, but a crash costs one of your three cars and breaks your streak.
Use nitro to catch up to a checkpoint gate when the clock is running low. A gate adds time, so a short burst of speed can save the run.
Brake before a gap, not in it. Slowing for a moment before a tight spot lets you choose your line, but holding the brake too long gives up points, since bonuses scale with speed.
Use the oncoming lanes only on open-road stretches with a clear view. The double points are tempting, but head-on traffic arrives much faster than same-direction traffic.

More advice in the Streaky guides.

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