What DirtBound is
DirtBound is a free rally game that runs in a web browser. You drive low-poly rally cars against the clock on gravel roads through forests, hills and mountains, past crowds of spectators, and there is nothing to download or install.
It is made by two people: Luke Baffait, who handles the art direction, interface and 3D, and Victor Boutros, who runs the server and infrastructure, and both of them write the code. They first shared it on the three.js forum on October 17, 2026 and put it on itch.io at the end of the month, and searches for the name shot up on October 30 and 31. The game is built with three.js, and its credits say it grew out of Starter Kit Racing, a racing template from the game-asset maker Kenney that mrdoob, the creator of three.js, ported to JavaScript.
The site is French, but the game speaks 16 languages and picks the one your browser uses, so most players see it in their own language straight away. Adding ?lang=en to the address forces English.
How it plays
The home screen offers five ways to play. Stage is the classic rally: the game generates a mountain road nobody has driven before and you race it alone against the clock. You choose the length (1, 2, 5 or 10 km, or Endless), the landscape (Varied, Lowlands or High mountains) and one of four seasonal themes: Marshmallow Vale for summer, Buttercup Meadow for spring, Russet Wood for autumn and Frostvale for winter.
Circuit is timed laps on official and community tracks, with an online leaderboard and the record holder's ghost to chase. Daily challenge gives everyone the same short stage for a day, with its own leaderboard. Multiplayer puts you in a lobby with other drivers: a public one anyone can join, or a private one you share with a code. Experimental is multiplayer with power-ups such as rockets, and collisions between cars are always on.
Beside the racing there is a garage of rally cars, each with five liveries, and an editor for building your own circuits and publishing them for other players. Signing in with Google is optional. You need it for the online leaderboards, multiplayer and publishing circuits, but you can drive stages and circuits without an account.
The rules on a stage are simple and strict. The car loses speed on the grass, and if no wheel touches the dirt for three seconds the game puts you back on the road and adds 5 seconds to your time. The same happens if you go over the edge, get stuck, or press R to reset the car yourself. Running into spectators costs 10 seconds.
What we saw on our stage
We drove a 2 km stage in the autumn Russet Wood theme, stage #335844, in the Volkswagen Golf from the garage. The screen shows the stage number, a running clock and a distance counter such as 0.24 / 2 km, so you always know how much road is left. You drive with W, A, S and D, pull the handbrake with Space, switch the camera with C and pause with Esc. By default you look down on the car from above at an angle, and C swaps to a view from behind it.
When we left the track, the game flashed Off track · +5 s and dropped us back on the road. When we hit spectators, it showed Spectator hit · +10 s. Both penalties go straight onto the clock, so a messy run is easy to spot in the final time.
The stage number also sits in the page address, and opening the same address again brings back the same road. The menu shows how many people are playing at that moment: between 213 and 229 while we played on October 31.
Tips
Stay on the dirt. The car is slower on the grass, and three seconds off the dirt costs five on the clock. On a 1 or 2 km stage a clean, slightly slower line beats a fast one that ends in a reset.
Give the crowds room. Hitting spectators costs 10 seconds, twice an off-track reset.
Replay a stage to learn it. Because the stage lives in the address, you can drive the same road again, and the game keeps your best time for each stage on your device. Share the address with a friend to race the same road.
Lower the graphics on a slow computer. The settings offer Low, Normal and Ultra presets. Low drops the trees, rocks, shadows and smoke so older machines stay smooth.
Sign in only when you want to compete. Stages and circuits work without an account. A Google sign-in and a username put your times on the online leaderboards and open multiplayer.
Which site is the official one
The official address is dirtbound.fr. The developers' itch.io page sends players there, and there is nothing to download: the game runs in the browser on a computer or a phone. Several unrelated games on itch.io have similar names, such as Driftbound and Dustbound, so check the address if a search lands you somewhere else.
