This is a guide on just about everything I know in relation to Star Drift Evolution (SDE from now on). This guide is not a "be all, end all" guide; I say these two things because there is probably something I'll forget to say that somebody else will mention in the comments that I did know that I just forgot.

If you have the full release and have checked the single player leaderboards, you may recognize my name. Technically, I am #1 globally in SDE, but Deefe and o! are better at this game than I am, so I'll say that I'm a top 3 player. Because of this, hopefully what I say in this guide actually means something (and hopefully helps you)!

This is my first guide that I've ever done, so hopefully I've done it so that you can click on the main headers on the right side of the screen to skip my ramblings and go to the spot that you think is actually helpful.

I really hope I'm not missing anybody here (if I am, I am so sorry), but to my knowledge, this game is made by one person (and I suspect he has a job other than this, so time is limited). For that being said, the amount of bugs this game has is EXTREMELY low (almost none at all, and the few that are found are usually visual and don't impact the racing/time trial aspect of the game). And for the amount of tracks and cars, the game is also extremely balanced, probably the most balanced game I've seen (involving cars/items with stats).

This probably won't apply to the majority of players reading this article, but if you are interested in the game, but don't want to shell out your hard earned money just yet, there is a demo you can try. In it you'll get access to a few of the "beginner" cars and the first few tracks. There is nothing different from these cars or tracks than the ones in the full release. While there is a leaderboard for this demo, it is separate from the full release's leaderboard; consequently, a top 10 time in the demo will most likely not be a top 10 time in the full release (but anything's possible).

There are three different modes in SDE: single player, local multiplayer, and online multiplayer. Single player is where most of your time will be spent, either trying to get a certain time, or to get a new personal best. Local multiplayer can have up to four players playing on the same computer with each other (this cannot be done in conjunction with online multiplayer (like Rocket League)). In this mode, collisions can be turned on or off. Online Multiplayer is where any player can start a lobby for others to join world-wide; these lobbies can be password protected to allow just friends to join if desired. SDE unfortunately does not have a huge player base like other games, so there usually won't be a multiplayer lobby open (and usually only 4 or 5 people online at one time anyway) unless it is the daily multiplayer lobby at 3pm Central Standard Time (or 10 pm if you're in/near Italy).

In the single player mode, there is an option called Daily Challenge. This involves a random car on a random track, and refreshes every 24 hours. The percent of SR you get (this number is independent of your SR on the track in career mode) here is translated 1:1 into points. At the end of the week, whoever has the most points wins. What do you win? Absolutely nothing. Is your name put somewhere on display? Not really, only for a week if you select Last Week's Results. Is it fun? ABSOLUTELY. In my experience you end up with a rival that's either just ahead or below you in the week's points. In my experience that person is Deefe. And he's almost impossible to beat in a week, but it makes it much more fun knowing that I've got a person to try to beat.


Every online game has mmr, and Skill Rating is SDE's mmr. There are two Skill Ratings: one is the track's skill rating (so you'll have 75 track SR's) and the other is overall skill rating. Overall SR is calculated by averaging all of your tracks' SR's together (the tracks you haven't done will be considered 0% until you set a time on them). A SR of 100% is obtained by getting the expert time on every track in the game (naturally if you've got faster than expert time on one track, you don't need to get expert time on another track to still have 100%). However, it is definitely possible to get MUCH higher than 100% overall SR.


For the money spent, the content received is amazing. There is no DLC at the time of this guide, so everything in the game is 100% free after the original payment for the game (an oxymoron, I know, but it makes sense to me). There are 75 tracks in the game that are 100% unique, which is quite a feat. These tracks feature different surfaces, scenery, and difficulties. There are 52 cars in the game, with 40 of them being "competitive" (able to get expert times) and the remaining 12 being "fun" (not able to get expert times). There are also stars in this game that are used to unlock cars and tracks in career mode, but I will talk later on how to earn those stars.

I've assumed you've scrolled through the pictures on the store page, so this will be nothing new. This game is not big on graphics; it is a low-poly game. For me at least, this was easily overcome and I got very comfortable with the game's graphics (for some people this is a turn-off, and if it is for you, please please please give it a couple of hours before saying "no" to the game). What this game excels at, is that if you see a dip in the track, even if it looks out of place, it really is a dip. Same goes for bumps. Unless you drive EXTREMELY far off track, every surface has almost a 100% accurate "hitbox" (surfaces usually don't have hitboxes, but I'm not a game designer so I don't know the word for it).

I've seen a couple discussion posts on how the physics in this game suck. I believe that's because they had a pre-existing idea of what the physics should be (more like an arcade game) and were not happy when the physics turned out to be different. This game is the most simulation type arcade game that I've come across (that's my opinion, I'm sure there are other games similar or more realistic that are arcade as well). But in this game, there are multiple types of surfaces that have different levels of grip (Sand/Dirt feels like dirt, mud feels like mud, asphalt feels like asphalt, etc), and there are cars with different levels of grip and downforce. Combine those two things together and you've got a game that, to me, seems very realistic.


Every car in SDE has stats that make it unique from other cars (unlike Rocket League where all cars drive the same speed, have same grip, etc). There are five universal stat categories with four having the ability to have 0-5 stars in each category, and a sixth hidden category. They are as follows (A car with 0 stars in a certain stat will still have that stat, it just will be minimal):

• Speed: This is how fast a car can go (top speed).
  
• Acceleration: This is how fast a car can get to top speed.
  
• Grip: This is essentially how many lateral g's a car can withstand without starting to drift. But, since this game is primarily a drifting game, grip can also be stated as how fast a car transitions from drifting to simply turning.
  
• Downforce: A bit tricky, this one. Downforce is usually defined as the faster you go, the more your car is pushed into the ground, resulting in more grip. The same can be said in SDE; however, downforce is more prevalent at lower speeds than real-world sims. It also somehow works wonders on ice tracks.
  
• Suspension: A yellow bar that displays whether a car's suspension is stiff or soft. Going along with the low-poly 100% accurate surfaces, if you hit a sharp bump with a car that has stiff suspension, you probably will catch a bit of air as opposed to a car with soft suspension that just rolls over it.
  
• Weight: This is the hidden category, but we know it exists. A fun car called Big Pride has 1 top speed and 4 grip, while another fun car called Godspeed only has 1 top speed (no other stats). The Godspeed handles MUCH better than the big pride, even though the Godspeed has no grip. This is because the Big Pride weighs a ton, while the Godspeed weighs almost nothing. This is the same reason the Petite, while having 4 grip, seems to slide everywhere because it weighs absolutely nothing (and has 5 acceleration, so wheels are just spinning all the time). That's my take on it at least.

Before I go any further, this was about 400 hours ago (and 6 months ago) that I did this, but I think this is correct. In order to unlock all the tracks and cars, you only need to get 4 stars on each track (each star being $7500 to buy cars). This should result in the tracks becoming unlocked as you play through the game, instead of having to grind tracks to get all 6 stars. This section will also bleed over into the next section (Beginner Tips)

With Circuit tracks, every track will have the following goals, which result in one star upon completion of each goal:

• Come in 1st place against AI
  
• Come in 3rd place against AI
  
• Beat Novice Lap Time (the novice lap time is shown here as well)
  
• Beat Novice Total Time (the novice total time is shown here as well)
  
• Beat Expert Lap Time
  
• Beat Expert Total Time

With Point to Point tracks (Rally Master tracks and a few others), the following goals will result in one star upon completion of each goal:

• Beat Novice Section 1 Time (Time is shown, essentially first half of the race)
  
• Beat Novice Section 2 Time (Time is shown, essentially second half of the race)
  
• Beat Novice Stage Time (Time is shown, the whole race put together)
  
• Beat Expert Section 1 Time
  
• Beat Expert Section 2 Time
  
• Beat Expert Stage Time

Just getting 4 out of those 6 goals above is all that is needed, with naturally the easiest to skip being the expert times.

The AI can be extremely annoying to race against, because they don't have to hit you to spin you out; just you touching them as you pass is enough to send YOU flying off the track and ruining a race. The AI will ALWAYS have collisions enabled (if I remember right), so the best strategy is to just pass all of them as quickly as possible (I know, easy to do, right?). By default, the AI are set to Normal difficulty, but can be changed to Hard or Easy if desired. This can be done by going into the settings from the pause menu when playing, or when at the single player main menu (I think, it may also be located in the main menu for everything).

If the AI are still being annoying, no worries; there's another option. There apparently is an Easy Mode that is independent of the AI. I have never enabled this option so I don't know exactly what it does, but there is an asterisk with a note beside it in the settings, so it should do its job. Apparently it makes the AI VERY easy to beat (so that's 2 guaranteed stars out of the 4 you need).

The following are tips for players ranging from just starting the game to about 50% SR. If you've skipped through the guide: SR is independent to each track, with overall SR being an average of all of your SR from the 75 tracks (tracks you've not attempted yet are 0% SR). 100% SR for a track is obtained by finishing at the expert LAP time for that track.

Once you pick a track to get stars on, a race menu will pop up with the goals needed for that track, along with several options. Those options are as follows:

• Start Race: obvious, starts the race against the AI
  
• Start Time Trial: obvious, it starts the time trial
  
• View Replay: Will only view the selected replay; nice if you want to see lines or are recording a hype video (#Magpie24)
  
• Replay: This can be cycled by clicking/selecting it. The selections are:
  
  • Closest Enemy: The person directly above you in the leaderboard for the track
    
  • Closest Friend: The person directly above you in the leaderboard for the track from your Steam Friend's List (only if they have the game AND have set a time on the track)
    
  • Last Lap: Never used this, but I'm fairly certain you don't have a ghost first lap through, but you do have it for every lap after, using your previous lap's ghost.
    
  • Off: no ghost whatsoever. Just you and the track.
    
  • Personal Best: Your all time personal best's ghost (could be from yesterday, could be from last year).
    
  • Leaderboard: Using left/right arrow keys/d-pad allows you to select one of the players from the right side of the screen (the players over there change depending upon the "Leaderboard" selection described below)
• Leaderboard: This can be cycled by clicking/selecting it. The selections are:
  
  • Top 10: Shows the top 10 players on the current track. Watching some of these replays is advised.
    
  • Self: Shows you, and the 9 players surrounding you on the Leaderboard.
    
  • Friends: Shows you, and the 9 players surrounding you that are your friends on Steam. Unfortunately, if you have 15 friends playing the game, it'll only show the 9 surrounding you.
• Time Trial: This can be cycled by clicking/selecting it. The selections are:
  
  • One Race: Only does the amount of laps that one race would take (2 - 5 laps depending on the track)
    
  • Endless: You can do as many laps as you want until you get the desired time. Or get exhausted.

To race against the AI (and to get the first 2 stars), simply select Start Race.

To complete the other stars, racing the AI is not required and is, in fact, an immense hindrance. To get the fastest time possible, you need to be focused solely on the track. To do this, we need to take the AI off. That means selecting the Start Time Trial option instead. I like following a ghost, whether it be the person in front of me, a top 10 time, or my personal best, but to each his own. If you'd like to do that as well, the look at the options listed above and cycle through them until you reach the desired settings.


With these tips (fingers crossed), you should be able to get the novice times on the tracks.

• Learn a bit about racing terminology. You don't need to know EVERYTHING about racing, but you DO need to know about apexes. This video is a good one to watch if you've never done a bit of racing in your life: Racing Lines Explained
  
• Different cars have different stats, which means they have different handling. Experiment to find out which car you're comfortable with and use it (even if none of the top 10 are using it, we're just going for novice times at the moment).
  
• Learn the track layout (the turns). Driving a bit from top down might help in this regard, because this way you can see how the turns look. What I mean by all of this is that for Tropical beach, it shouldn't be, it's a left turn, into kind of a left turn, which then does something and I end up at the finish." Instead, it should be "it's a left turn, then a jump. That goes into a u-turn, then I have that water part, then another u-turn". Knowing the track is much better than knowing the car you're using.
  
• Use 3rd person or 3rd person custom. I recommend these two cameras because they allow you to have the finest control of your car at the expense of seeing the track (which we've negated by memorizing it, right?). To my knowledge, all of the overall top 10 players globally use 3rd person or 3rd person custom.
  
  

This section builds upon the beginner tips. If you're around 50-70% SR, I'd suggest just giving a glance over the beginner tips to see if there's anything you didn't know beforehand. If you're all good to go, then these following tips should (hopefully) get you to be around 100% (and maybe higher). One big thing to note: TOTAL RACE TIME DOES NOT MATTER; ONLY LAP TIME MATTERS

While we're talking about hidden mechanics, there's another hidden mechanic that I like to call boost. No, there's no NOS gauge/button to magically increase your speed, but this boost happens after you've done a decent drift (not this barely sliding, I'm talking about like a hairpin drift). When this happens, your car's tachometer (RPM gauge) will be bouncing on the rev limiter and making a sound like this: waaaAAAAHDADADADADADADADADADA. Naturally the sound changes from car to car, so it won't ALWAYS sound like the above example. But when this happens, your car will accelerate MUCH faster than normal. Controlling this and knowing when to do this is paramount.

Gone are the days where you picked a car just for fun. Now we're getting serious. Check the top 10 players on the track, and see what most of them are driving (ignore me, because I usually always drive the turbo). Pick that car, because those top 10 have most likely experimented with most of the cars that are good for that track anyway (or rather, the ones that are EASIEST to get fast times on).

Now that we're really focusing on getting a good lap time, we really need to focus on getting the racing line down. If you're going wide in a turn, it's going to mess you up for the next turn, so even if you manage to save it, you're ultimately slowing yourself too much to get that expert time (so a restart is advised). Now, with that being said...

Everything is relative. A mistake to me might not be a mistake to you. Think of it like this. There is a set amount of mistakes that you can make and STILL get the expert time. But nobody, not even you, knows EXACTLY how many mistakes can be made (you can get an approximate number through experience, but even still, it's unknown). You will never drive a perfect lap. Even I haven't driven a perfect lap, and (at this time) I have the most #1 records in the game (that's also why I don't qualify myself as the best driver in SDE). My point is, let's say the amount of mistakes you can make in a lap is 5 (so 5 mistakes, still can get expert lap time). Just because you've made 4, don't restart just yet until you're SURE that you won't get the expert lap time.

Don't be afraid to throw the car into a drift. Tires are impervious to damage, so burn that rubber! Think of it this way, if drifting is in the name of the game, you probably should do it. Once you start whipping the car into turns, you'll find that you'll get much quicker times.


I know that in all the tips above I've referred to just doing one lap. That's because we're looking to get a fast lap time first. No point in trying to get 3 laps in when you can't even get 1 done mostly right. Once you're able to set some expert laps, then go for the expert total time.

Before reading these tips, I strongly recommend you to look at the Expert Tips section of this guide, even if you've already obtained 100% overall SR, just in case there's a tip you didn't know about. Now, at this point of the game, there's not really much to teach you since you're literally an expert at the game. However, it is possible to be MUCH quicker than the expert lap times, and hopefully these tips will help you.

On every circuit track you start about 100-200 meters behind the start/finish line to give you the speed needed to start the hotlap (it's trying to save time on the outlap, if you know what that is). However, some tracks can allow you to get even GREATER starting speeds if you know how to do it. Unfortunately, this part of the replay is not recorded and cannot be seen, which means it's up to you to figure out how to do the start. At some point, I'll link a video of mine that has the cheese starts (at the time of this guide I haven't even started recording it).

This depends upon the grip of the car, but this is when you're looking at the top 10 time and you're trying to get the same acceleration out of a turn. It may be the difference in holding the drift .2 seconds more than you did last time (this is why I like having the ghost on so I can see exactly what they're doing), just to get that better exit/entry to the next turn. Or it may be a handbrake only turn that you've been braking/handbraking for. Which leads into...

Braking and handbraking is the much safer option. However, if not going at a high speed, handbraking only is actually a faster way; it's just much riskier (requires a higher level of skill to not go wide, etc). For instance, on Taroko Gorge, when starting the lap, the first hairpin is a brake/handbrake turn simply because of the high speed. But the subsequent hairpins are more quickly done if only handbrake is used (but the handbrake has to be held a bit longer and the drift has to be started earlier, hence the increased risk).

I've said it before in Expert Tips, but your car choice is very important. FOR THE MOST PART, picking a car that's not driven by one of the top 10 players on the track will NOT result in a top 10 time. Granted, there are outliers (unfortunately, I'm one of them) who, by sheer stubbornness, force a different car into the top 10. But that is definitely not the norm.

I haven't watched a lot of the top 10 past the #3 time; I usually just watch the #1 time and try to beat it. But before grinding, I'd recommend either watching the replay of the #1 (or any of the top 3 or 5 times) or putting it up as a ghost. Because there may be a track limit abuse that you're not aware of that is allowing them to set that insane time. For instance, on SkyFly stadium, The high jump after the crossroad can be skipped by driving to the right of the jump. Also, on the same track, the first turn can be taken much faster by literally slamming the rear of your car into the bumpers on the outside of the turn. I wouldn't have known either of these tricks unless I watched the #1 replay, and they save about 1-2 seconds by the end of the lap.

*NOTE: I'll be adding some video links to this guide once I've recorded some tutorials and whatnot, so it's still technically a WIP. They'll be added 3/21-3/25 at the earliest.

That's about it for this guide. I think I've included just about everything that I can think of without completely boring you out of your skull. If you've made it this far, I hope you've learned something that can help you enjoy SDE a bit more. I cannot say how much I enjoy this game. With that being said, I think I'll also include here a FAQs section that's not answered by this guide. If there are any questions or concerns you have that I didn't cover, feel free to leave them in the comment section and I'll try to answer them to the best of my ability.

So there was at one point in the alpha/beta. But it was deemed to be too OP because of the rev boost mentioned in the guide. That, on top of the game being difficult enough as it was, the manual option was taken out, leaving just automatic option remaining. Does this take away from the game? Absolutely not. In my opinion, the people complaining about not having manual in the game probably don't drive top 10 times with automatic, which means they could drive faster anyway WITHOUT manual (apologies if I've offended anyone there).

This is an option that I saw a few people post about in the discussions, but there's a reason to this. This game was made in Unity, and I suspect that the obstacles and whatnot were made with blender or some program along those lines. With that being said, there's no quick way to program it so that anybody can build a level even if it only has checkpoints (and no objects); that lies solely with the programmer.

I think this question is asked from people who are coming from either drifting sim games like the Assetto Corsa groups, or from the racing sim games like ACC or Gran Turismo. This game is an arcade game, so the physics are bound to be different. Since there was only one programmer who made this game (again, I'm sorry if I'm wrong on that), either he used a physics model already in use, or he made it from scratch. Point being, it's pretty darn great for an indie game. They won't change, no matter how much they're complained about, so the best option is to learn how to make the physics work in your favor.

To my knowledge, there is one server for this game. As in, there are no US east, EU west, SEA servers. If you're in Australia, you're playing with the Italian guy who's playing with the American. Consequently this leads to ping issues and lag. So you'd be driving along with the closest car 30 meters behind you, but suddenly you spin out because that same car on HIS screen was right next to you. To prevent this horrible frustration, multiplayer was ghosted. Now I don't know how it happens, but on MY screen (I'm US Central) even if a player wins by .02, I can tell who came first; it's never been different than from what my eyes saw.