Gearfall Derby

Gearfall Derby is the kind of racer you pick up for one race and put down forty minutes later. You bolt together cars from scrapyard parts, then throw them down tracks that bend and crumble as you drive. The tilt steering is optional — I switched to on-screen buttons and never looked back.

There's a surprising amount of tuning under the hood. Swap out a suspension and the whole car handles differently, which makes the garage almost as fun as the track itself. Everything is saved locally, so a subway ride with no signal is a perfectly good time to grind out a few new parts.

What we liked

• Snappy button controls that beat tilt
• Deep car tuning without paywalls
• Runs smooth even on older phones