TrackMania is an arcade racing game developed by Nadeo and published by Ubisoft and is part of the TrackMania series.

TrackMania games have a time trial format, with medals awarded for beating set times in single-player mode, as well as the ability to submit times to online rankings. Players may choose to respawn at any time, for example if they land upside down, leave the track or get off to a poor start. Multiplayer races operate as concurrent time trials; players' cars are visible on the same track at the same time, but cannot physically interact with one another.
Source and more info: Wikipedia[en.wikipedia.org]

The main benefit of TrackMania has always been its unique physics, amazing handling, friendly community, and huge amounts of customization, from user-made maps and car skins to custom gamemodes and scripted plugins.


A new player could find the game's interesting and unusual abstract design strange.
Because the developers wanted this game's size to be as small as possible, all the blocks are very low-poly. And everything you see on the track is actually reusable blocks or items that are embedded in the game and that you can also use on your tracks.

Despite this limitation, map makers have still created a large number of stunning maps even without the use of custom made or imported items (which many also do).

Fullspeed, tech, dirt, ice. For now these words probably mean nothing to you. But sooner or later, playing this game you will love 1 or 2 of those and hate all the others. These are only a few of the countless track genres. There are at least 30 distinct map types, not counting other gamemodes or environments from previous games. Yes, there are a lot of things to learn, enjoy, or hate in this game.

Track genre can be determined by a lot of things; maps usually combine more than one genre, but here are some that might interest you:

• Tech - Tight turns and passages throughout. The driver often required to drift most parts or let off throttle. Easy to learn, hard to master.
  
• Fullspeed - Full throttle the entire map. Long flowing turns. Loops, wallrides, and similar common. Brake very rarely used, except for special driving techniques. High speeds expected.
  
• LOL - Shorter tracks centered around a single idea or challenge. Simple and driveable. Usually, but not always, luck based. Good for new/casual players. Heavily luck based LOL-style maps fall under the "Kacky"-Tag.
  
• RPG - Themed maps which often incorporate many styles. RPG tracks often consist of inside passages, tricks like pipe balancing, wallride balancing, difficult jumps and mazes. Common elements include modded textures, stories, grand scenery, wayfinding, and heavy use of mediatracker.
  
• Endurance - A very long race map. Usually over 3 minutes in length, and usually a point to point race, not a multilap. The map may have multiple styles throughout the race. RPGs and Trials by themselves are not usually called Endurance. It mostly refers to race maps with Tech, SpeedTech, FullSpeed, or a mix of these with other styles.

And on all of those tracks, you can compete with the best players from your region or the entire world, trying to finish the track as fast as you can. All tracks also give you a medal for achieving a certain time, so you can see how well you learned the track, and you can even get a secret Author Medal, which would mean that you beat the map author's time.

This game is available for free, but most online features are locked behind yearly subscriptions.
Some people hate it, but I think it's a good system to finance updates to the game and its content, as Nadeo is a fairly small company.The free version is enough to get a feel for the game and see if you like it or not.
The standard version is enough for most purposes, such as playing with friends or enjoying user-created content (though there are ways to do so on the free version; more on that later).
And a club version is needed if you want to use custom car skins and publish your own content.

First of all, I recommend that you play the training campaign and, after that, the seasonal campaign; both of them are available on the free version.
After you've figured out how to get at least silver medals on most of the tracks, you can try the Tracks of the Day, but I'd recommend starting with the TrackMania School campaigns. You can only play those with the standard or club version, sadly.

To find the campaigns, you need to click on "Library" and type "TMS" in the search bar. Being this new to the game, you can skip the Tricks, Precision, Trial, Moving Blocks, and Water campaigns. But eventually, you should learn all of those tracks.

You can find those on YouTube, most of them either outdated or explaining obvious things, but here are some useful ones that I found:

• 5 Most Essential Trackmania Skills To Learn by Wirtual
  
• How to DRIFT in Trackmania by DidacusTM
  
• ULTIMATE GUIDE to Gears by Ski Freak TM
  
• COMPLETE Ice Tutorial by BirdieTM

If you don't understand something or are having any troubles with the game, don't worry, because this game has the friendliest community of all games:

• Official TrackMania Discord Server[discord.gg]
  
• List of all TrackMania Discord communities[docs.google.com]
  
• TrackMania Reddit

TMX is the holy grail of user-made maps. Every good map ever made is here (and a lot of bad ones too). Tracks can be searched by preferred style and sorted by number of awards received. This way, you can find the best tracks of your favorite style and enjoy them as much as possible. You can also upload your own tracks and award the ones you like.
trackmania.exchange[trackmania.exchange]

User-made tracks are only available on the standard or club editions... or are they?
Well.. if you go to Play - Local - Local Multiplayer and select either of the two modes, you can actually play any map that you've downloaded from TMX on the free version.
But I didn't tell you that! Also, it is probably fixed by now.. right?


I can't even begin to describe how many things OpenPlanet has to offer.
Basically, it's like a mod manager but better, because it itself allows mods to be created. There are a lot of mods (we call them plugins) that will make your TrackMania life a lot easier, and you can even create your own plugin (but only with club access). And many of those are even available for the free version!
Download openplanet and plugins for it here[openplanet.dev]

• Ultimate Medals[openplanet.dev] by Phlarx - allows you to see the required times for all the medals as well as your personal best time at any moment.
  
• Checkpoint Counter[openplanet.dev] by Phlarx - displays how many checkpoints you've collected and how many are left to be collected to be able to finish the track.
  
• Tweaker[openplanet.dev] by fentras LABS - allows you to modify hidden settings to boost performance.
  
• No Respawn Timer[openplanet.dev] by AnfR82 - displays the time you could have made without respawning.
  
• Mania Exchange[openplanet.dev] by Greep - browse TMX in-game!

Openplanet's sister site, tm.io, allows you to browse all the available data about the game. Player profiles, track records, clubs, servers - everything you want to find out more about is here.
Also, you can log in with your Ubisoft account to access your stats more easily.
https://trackmania.io

Play the campaign tracks with your friends (or random teammates) against opponents of the same skill level.
Available on the free version!

A daily competition for players of any skill level, hosted at 7 p.m. CET, each time on a new, unknown map.
You got 15 minutes to set the best time; after that, you play knockout rounds with 64 players of your level (players that got almost the same time as you).
Available only on standart or club editions

A FallGuys-like game mode with a COTD-like competition, hosted at 8 p.m. CET.
Has a small but very dedicated fan base.
Royal Family Discord[discord.com]
Available on the free version!

The campaign server and arcade program can be played on the free version!
The rest of the rooms are only available with standard or club access. Most of the servers just feature a unique map playlist, but some of them even have a different game mode.

https://gtm.steamproxy.vip/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2927830210
https://gtm.steamproxy.vip/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2927838645
https://gtm.steamproxy.vip/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2927492235

This guide was created in just 2 hours, so I'm sorry if I made a mistake somewhere.
You can suggest changes or additions to this guide in the comment section, as well as ask any questions you may have.

If you want to thank me, you can play some of my tracks[trackmania.exchange]. (However, they're not very good xdd)

• 03.02.2023 - Guide Published
  
• 04.02.2023 - Added "Check out those guides too" section