Modes guide

Four ways to play on Big Wave Beach. Every match lasts three minutes; what changes is how you score, and so how you should drive.

What every mode shares

• A room holds up to eight karts. Computer racers fill an online room up to six, and a solo practice to all eight.
• A match starts with a three-second countdown, when nobody can drive or fire, and then runs for three minutes. Twelve seconds of results follow, and the next match starts in the same room and mode.
• Only the clock ends a match: there is no score limit and no overtime.
• The highest score wins. A tie goes to the kart with more knockouts, then to the one wrecked fewer times, then to whoever joined the room first.
• A wrecked kart loses the item it held, sits out three seconds and comes back at full health on one of eight spawn points round the beach, usually the one furthest from the other karts. For its first three seconds back nothing can hurt it or blast it about, though other karts can still bump it, and everyone gets the same three seconds when a match goes live.
• Quick Play joins any open public room, whatever its mode, and opens a Classic room if there is none. To choose the mode, host a room.

Classic

Each knockout is a point and nothing else scores, so your score is simply how many karts you have wrecked. Between karts on the same score, the one wrecked fewer times comes first.

• Damage only pays when the kart goes down: finish off hurt karts before they get six quiet seconds to start healing.
• Staying in one piece settles ties, so do not trade wrecks you do not need to.

Bounty

Knockouts are a point each, but the player with the most points wears a crown, drawn big over their head where everyone can see it, and wrecking whoever wears it is worth two. Nobody wears the crown until someone scores. A tie never takes it off its wearer: to take it, you have to get ahead. Being wrecked does not cost the wearer the crown either; only being overtaken does.

• Behind? The crown is worth double: two crown knockouts make up as much ground as four ordinary ones.
• Wearing it? Every rival, and every computer racer, comes for you first. Keep moving, keep your distance, and hold on to a Bubble Bath if you get one.

Derby

No guns. Item boxes give only Hot Sauce, Bubble Bath and Mega Burp, and you wreck rivals by driving into them. Every crash can hurt: the faster two karts close on each other, the more damage is done, anything under about 4 metres a second does none, and a hit into a kart's side does up to half as much again as one into its nose or tail. The damage goes by how hard each kart was driving into the other, so a kart that was not driving into its rival takes damage but deals none, and two karts meeting head-on at the same speed take the same. Big hits spin the victim out.

A side-on hit at about 16 metres a second into a stopped kart does around 70 damage, and the same hit on Hot Sauce wrecks a kart at full health. The Mega Burp still blasts, the fireworks crates still go off, and a Bubble Bath blocks crash damage like any other. Each knockout is a point.

• Hit karts side-on, and save Hot Sauce for a big hit.
• Do not sit still: a stopped kart takes every crash and deals none.

King of the Mound

The hill is the flat top of the Sandcastle Mound in the middle of the beach, 1.4 metres up, round the sandcastle keep. Be the only kart up there with your wheels on the sand and you score a point every half second. Time alone on top adds up across visits, so leaving halfway to a point is not wasted. With two or more karts on top nobody scores until one is left, and a kart in the air neither holds the hill nor contests it. Knockouts are worth three points, as much as a second and a half alone on top.

A ring of light round the mound shows who holds it: white when it is empty, orange when it is contested, green when it is yours and red when it is someone else's. The mound's sand sides slope all the way round, so you can drive up from any direction, and two item boxes sit on top.

• Clear the top before you settle: a Mega Burp blasts away every kart within 9 metres, though the keep shelters karts on its far side.
• Whoopee cushions on the slopes catch karts on their way up.
• Computer racers head for the mound and go after whoever is on it.

For what each item does, see the items guide; for the controls, how to play.