Six tracks, one country.
Rig King is set entirely in Australia, and each track is planted with the trees, shrubs and grasses of the place that inspired it. The tracks are fictional roads; the country is real. Together they form the difficulty ladder, from the home speedway to the Kimberley at night. The training road and the first three tracks are free; the last three come as the Big Country Track Pack, an in-app purchase on iPhone, iPad, Mac and Apple TV.
01 · Outback South Australia
Dusty Creek Speedway
Starting track · Free
A country dirt oval on the edge of a small outback town: red dirt, a covered grandstand like the old street-circuit stands, a concrete wall with a chain-link catch fence, sheds and a water tank out the back. This is where you learn to slide a car up two narrow ramps onto a moving trailer, with the whole town watching. The catch fence bounces you back onto the track, so mistakes cost time rather than the heat.
What's unique: the simplest rig route in the game and the one you will know by heart. No tunnels, no ferries, just the rig, the corners and everyone else wanting your spot.
Plants: all native to outback South Australia. River red gums, the big white-trunked eucalypts of inland creeks, line the creek and shade the grandstand. Coolibah, a smaller, rough-barked gum of the floodplains, stands on the flats. Across the plains are western myall and belah, two grey, drooping wattle-and-oak-like trees of the dry country, and mulga, the low, grey-green wattle scrub that covers much of inland Australia. Underneath are saltbush and bluebush, the knee-high silver shrubs that outback sheep graze on, with spiky clumps of spinifex grass and blue flax lily, a strappy tussock with blue flowers, between the gums. The grandstand garden has grevillea, a native shrub with red spidery flowers, and kangaroo paws, whose furry red and yellow flowers look like a paw.
02 · Northern Rivers, New South Wales
Nightcap Drive
Rainforest road · Free
Inspired by the subtropical hinterland of northern New South Wales: green hills, dairy paddocks, a village of weatherboard houses, and a road that climbs through rainforest to a ridge tunnel. A showpiece waterfall falls into a lake alive with birds before the river runs down to the sea. The road is a closed street circuit, so it has guardrails, driveways and a tunnel portal that tall vehicles clip.
What's unique: elevation and compression. The tunnel entrance squeezes the pack together, the rig pushes cars toward the walls, and the van scrapes the lintel. Holding the deck through the climb and the bends is hard on purpose.
Plants: the subtropical rainforest of the Northern Rivers. The canopy is yellow carabeen, a tall rainforest tree with wide buttressed roots, flame trees, which drop their leaves and turn scarlet with flowers, and lilly pilly, a glossy-leaved native with pink berries, with strangler figs where their huge spreading crowns clear the road. Bangalow palms and cabbage tree palms, the two tall native palms of the NSW coast, stand with tree ferns, king ferns and elkhorns, the big antler-shaped ferns that grow on tree trunks, at the falls. The understorey is lomandra, a tough strappy grass, cunjevoi, a giant-leaved native lily, bird's nest fern, palm lily, native ginger and walking stick palm. Plantation bananas grow on the lower slopes and eucalypts on the higher ridge.
03 · Illawarra coast, New South Wales
Sea Cliff Run
Coast road and bridge · Free
Inspired by the Sea Cliff Bridge south of Sydney, where the road leaves the land and sweeps out over the ocean under sandstone cliffs. The run crosses the bridge at sunrise with hard barriers both sides and no shoulder, then dives into a huge illuminated cathedral tunnel in the headland, with a rockfall waiting at the exit. The tunnel is a game design choice, not a real place.
What's unique: the bridge. It is the most exposed boarding in the game, and side-by-side fighting over the water is a gamble. The AI holds its rockets for the tunnel, so expect fireworks in the dark.
Plants: the salt-blown heath of the NSW coast, and no gums at all. Coastal rosemary, a grey-green shrub with small white flowers, covers the slopes. Coastal banksias, low gnarled trees with pale yellow bottlebrush flower spikes, stand back from the road. On the verges are coastal wattle, lomandra, a strappy native grass, and pigface, a succulent ground cover with bright pink flowers. A stand of Norfolk Island pines, the tall symmetrical pines planted along so many Australian beachfronts, tops the headland. A mob of wallabies grazes a crest on the land side.
Tracks 04 to 06
Big Country Track Pack
Croc River Run, Long Haul Bash and Sunset Gorge, as one in-app purchase on iPhone, iPad, Mac and Apple TV. The 4x4 Ute and the Tow Truck are separate purchases, not part of the pack.
04 · The Daintree, Far North Queensland
Croc River Run
Point to point · Ferry · Trail · Big Country Track Pack (Apple)
Set in the Daintree, where a cable ferry crosses a crocodile river and a famous 4WD track runs north through the rainforest. The rig drives down the riverside road past the croc warning signs, boards the Old Salty ferry under its own power, and the fight carries on aboard while the river slides past. On the far bank the road gives up: a bumpy, kerb-free trail through dense jungle, a splash creek, and a paddock-fence finish.
What's unique: it is the first point-to-point event and the only one with a parked trailer. On the ferry there is nowhere safe to go, and on the trail the bumps make the trailer itself hop. The cars run lifted suspension for this event only. Crocodiles watch from the banks; nothing in the game can hit them.
Plants: the wet tropics of the Daintree. Along the river are weeping paperbarks, the native trees with soft, peeling white bark, Leichhardt trees, with big round leaves and ball-shaped flowers, and lilly pilly, with forest red gums in the open forest and grey and red mangroves on the mud at both banks. On the trail are Licuala fan palms, with round pleated leaves like open fans, and tall slender Alexandra palms; strangler figs; umbrella trees, with leaves spread like spokes; Hope's cycads, the ancient palm-like plants of the north; a buttressed rainforest giant; king ferns and tree ferns; lawyer cane, the spiny climbing palm that catches on everything; elkhorns and bird's nest ferns growing on the trunks; hanging vines; cottonwood hibiscus with its yellow flowers on the creek banks; and a big-leaf edge of cunjevoi and native ginger. Bananas grow near the farms.
05 · Queensland to Western Australia
Long Haul Bash
Road train · Outback · Big Country Track Pack (Apple)
The long drive west. It starts as an ordinary motorway fight, narrows into farm country with cattle yards and kangaroo signs, and pulls into Long Ways Roadhouse, where the rig couples a second trailer and becomes a road train. Then the seal runs out: corrugations, whoops and red dirt all the way to the horizon, with emus crossing where they please. This is the road that leads to Sunset Gorge.
What's unique: the road train. You board the rear trailer, fight across its deck and cross two narrow steel tracks to the front trailer, and only the front trailer scores. The roadhouse is also the only place in the game to re-arm, once, if you are willing to leave the fight to do it.
Plants: the country changes with every act, all of it native. Eucalypts and dry grass line the motorway. From the farm country on there are saltbush and bluebush, the knee-high silver shrubs of the inland, mulga, the grey-green wattle scrub, and clumps of spinifex, the spiky hummock grass of the outback. Ghost gums, with smooth chalk-white trunks, stand on the red dirt, along with cathedral termite mounds, the tall fluted earth towers built by termites, and dead trees, stumps and fallen logs. After rain the farm acts carry wildflowers: Sturt's desert pea, with its red and black flowers along the ground, mulla mulla, with fluffy pink spikes, and paper daisies. Old Canary Island date palms, planted at homesteads a century ago, stand in the farmhouse gardens. Kangaroos, cattle and emus share the road.
06 · The Kimberley, Western Australia
Sunset Gorge
Red gravel · Sunset into night · Big Country Track Pack (Apple)
Inspired by the Kimberley after rain: red gravel, creek crossings with floodway markers, a billabong gone green, boabs and termite mounds, and a narrow red-rock gorge. The heat starts at golden hour and ends under the stars, with headlights and marker lamps coming on along the way.
What's unique: the road is the opponent. Corrugations, washouts, hidden bumps and a signature trailer-hop keep the deck moving under you, and the gorge section runs between rock walls with water streaks down their faces. The dark changes how you read the track, but never how the cars drive.
Plants: the Kimberley's own. Boabs, the fat bottle-trunked trees found nowhere else in Australia, stand by the road and across the infield. Kimberley fan palms, the slender palms of the region's sandstone gorges, line the gorge floor and ring the billabong. Snappy gums, small white-trunked eucalypts of the rocky north-west, grow among spinifex and golden tussock grass, with saltbush and bluebush in the dry country. At the water are pandanus, the spiky-leaved screw palms of northern creeks, with reeds, water lilies, crinum lilies, a big white native lily, and blue flax lilies on the banks, and cathedral termite mounds on the flats. Egrets and ducks work the billabong; an emu mob crosses the road.
Training road
Your first drive is a sealed country road into Dusty Creek: paddock fences, gums, a shed, a water tank and a windmill, with the speedway signs counting down. Try the rocket, the oil and the tyre on the way, then catch the truck and get aboard.
