Taking the tabletop card game Top Trumps to the next level, London-based developers Hutch Games and supercar website EVO recently released a mobile card game that draws inspiration from the family-favorite card game. The game is called Top Drives, and as the name might suggest, it’s primarily aimed at car and racing enthusiasts.
You need to collect many car cards, build a team, and then set your team up to complete various races and events. There are car cards from all of the major and well-known car makers such as Chevrolet, Nissan, and Ford. Even the mighty Hummer makes an appearance!
The events and races take place all over the world, from the USA’s West Coast to Tykkimäki in Finland. No matter where in the world you are racing, your team goes head-to-head with other vehicles in various modes, such as drag races, G-Force tests, and indoor karting circuits.
While the game itself may seem relatively straightforward, there are a few things you’ll want to know when you’re first starting out. In this beginner’s guide, we lay out all the tips and tricks you need to get ahead of the pack in Top Drives.
Learn Your Cars
I can’t stress this enough. There are a whopping ~700 car cards in the game.
Because there are different kinds of races, you need to remember your best cars for each race type. While it is exciting to collect all the cars you can, your main aim is to progress through the game. Having a well-established deck and knowing what you have will help you get through the levels quicker.
Your garage has a limited number of slots to hold cars, so you are going to want to have a couple of cars that accelerate quickly for drag races, cars that have good grip, cars that do well on dirt and sand, cars that run well in the rain, etc.
Remember to Upgrade
All cars can be upgraded.
You never know when you are going to pull an excellent car card, so once you start getting Rare cars (the ones highlighted with blue), you need to upgrade them.
Each car has 24 upgrade slots that are split between engine, weight, and chassis upgrades. Starting prices vary depending on the rarity of the car, but the “standard” rare car upgrades start at $700 in-game dollars.
Replay Each Location to Reap More Rewards
As you will notice, each location has a maximum of three stars for you to collect. Each location also has 15 reward cards for you to choose from. Each star lets you pick one card.
This might seem a bit unfair because it forces you to leave 12 cards on the table. But the good news is that you can replay locations as many times as you want until you have received all 15 rewards.
Given that there are 15 locations, that’s a lot of gold, XP, and cars for you to pick up just by replaying tracks.
Another reward that you must make sure that you get is the Boss cars.
After you have gone through nine stages in a location, you get the chance to take on that location’s champion. Beat them, and you will get their cars. Most of the time, they are pretty good, so grinding for these wins can be useful when you are just starting.
Buy Card Packs
As you progress, you will earn both gold and dollars. These can be used to upgrade your cars and to purchase card packs from the “Buy Cars” menu. Most of the packs contain five cards (apart from the ceramic ones that also come in 25-card and 50-card packs), and you are guaranteed to get at least one good car in each pack (apart from in the cheapest pack).
Of course, the rarity of the cars you pick up will mostly depend on how much you want to spend on a pack.
You can also purchase card packs if you want to find a certain kind of car. If you want a French car, an off-roader, a coupé, etc., then you can buy specific packs in hopes of getting what you want.
We hope that these hints and tips will give you a better experience when it comes to playing Top Drives. At the end of the day, it all comes down to looking at the race requirements and finding which cars in your deck which match them.
Have you played any Top Drives? How have you found it? Tell us which impressive cars you’ve managed to find. And stay tuned for more Top Drive guides!
For more great racing games, be sure to check out this great list over on Drifted.
