GAMEVIL Inc. may be better known for their various games in the action RPG category, such as Arcana Tactics, as well as sports games like Baseball Superstars. However, they’re also the company that developed Project Cars GO, which is now available for iOS and Android devices. The game promises one-touch racing gameplay and an experienced specifically distilled for the mobile gamer, with dozens of real-life cars and brands as well as several actual race tracks from around the world.
You can also use paints, patterns, and liveries to customize your cars, tune these vehicles and level up their parts, and optimize your performance by choosing between General and Category Tuning. There are also various game modes and race types to keep you entertained and ensure that there isn’t a dull moment as you collect more cars and improve them, either by upgrading your existing parts or using Mods, or custom parts.
This is quite an in-depth racing game, to say the least — in that sense, it isn’t too different from other games in the genre, such as those from the CSR and Need for Speed series. However, there’s enough in this title to help it stand out from the competition, and with all the features and modes available, it might take you a while to figure everything out. Fortunately, we’ve got something that could get you off on the right foot, as we’ve come up with 12 tips for this Project Cars GO beginner’s guide — all designed for rookie drivers and intermediate players.
1. The Basics Of Project Cars GO
If you’ve played racing games like CSR Racing 2, the mechanics of Project Cars GO should be very familiar, though there are some twists that make this game particularly unique. As you’ll see during the tutorial stage, you will first be taught how to make a perfect start — just keep the needle within the light blue range by rapidly tapping on the screen. If the needle remains within that range at the time the race starts, you will get a Perfect start, though this may also be rated Great, Good, Okay, or Poor if you don’t have your technique down just yet.
Next, you’re going to be prompted to tap, hold, or release your finger from the screen depending on the action. When you see a light blue gate, tap the screen in order to shift gears once your car passes through the gate. Hitting the brakes can be done by holding on the screen once your car passes through the red gates; once it goes through the green gates, release your finger to accelerate again.
This may take some getting used to in the early goings, but it shouldn’t take long before this becomes second nature to you. You don’t need to worry about steering your car left or right during the turns, or hitting the gas pedal in regular situations — the game will take care of this for you automatically. The only three things you need to pay attention to are shifting gears, braking, and accelerating after braking.
After the tutorial stage, you will be asked to choose from one of three Tier 1 vehicles — these are the least impressive cars available in the game, but regardless of your choice of car, each of them will have the same starting stats. That means it’ll basically be your personal preference whether you want to opt for the old-school Ford Mustang fastback, the Renault Megane, or the Toyota GT-86.
Generally speaking, there’s a wide range of real-life vehicles to choose from across all six tiers, including production cars from multiple eras, as well as various race cars — we shall get to the topic of cars later on, but for now, your first car will do for your first few games playing the game.
You will find out during your first few days of playing Project Cars GO that winning races is very easy. The traditional race in the World Tour section would feature eight cars as you go through parts of various real-world race tracks, but not the entire track. (You will always be in the back row, but don’t worry about this handicap at first!) A typical race of this type will last less than a minute, and once you cross the finish line, you will be awarded a maximum of three medals depending on your time — the faster your time is, the more medals you will receive. All you need is one medal in order to unlock the next race, though you certainly wouldn’t want to settle for just one.
Get three medals and you will earn all the one-time rewards that you see in the Rewards section, get two and you’ll only get the rewards for a two-medal and a one-medal finish, get one and naturally, you’ll only get the one-time rewards for a one-medal finish. Lose the race and you don’t get any medals, thus requiring you to repeat the race — you will, however, get a consolation prize in the form of the “Participation” prize you may have seen in the Rewards section of the race.
Your rewards for winning will typically include cash, which is the game’s common currency, and Madbucks, which is a resource used to purchase boxes. For the final race in a World Tour’s chapter, you will get cash, Madbucks, and a free box, which would usually contain cash, diamonds (the game’s premium currency), paint colors, and/or special parts that you can use to customize your car. You will also earn experience points toward increasing your player level; moving on to a new level adds one point to your maximum fuel capacity while also automatically filling up your tank!
Fuel is the game’s unit of energy, and when you start the game, you will have 60 units of Fuel available to use, with most modes costing about three to five Fuel per race. You have the option to buy more Fuel in the in-game store, although this refills over time and it may be better to wait it out instead of spending a few diamonds just to be able to race again.
As you progress in the game, you will also see notifications from your NPC crew about certain things you need to do — these are related to the Missions section, and we’re going to be discussing that in a couple of tips.
2. String Together Perfect Combos To Gain More Speed
We’ve already talked about what to do in order to shift, brake, and accelerate — now the challenge is to do all these things at just the right time and do them consecutively. That’s what you’ll want to aim for during each race, but before we get that, you will see different prompts depending on your timing when shifting, breaking, and accelerating — your timing can be Poor, Okay, Good, Great, or Perfect, and the better your timing, the more speed you can gain as you work your way past the other cars in the field.
Going back to what we mentioned at the start of this tip, you should make it your objective to string together as long a Perfect Combo as possible. For each time you get rated Perfect after shifting, braking, or accelerating, that will add to your combo multiplier, and as that multiplier gets larger, the more speed you will gain. Consequently, that could make it harder for you to time your shifting, braking, and acceleration.
And when you get a Great, Good, Okay, or especially a Poor rating for your next move, that will break the combo, and you will be notified accordingly on the screen. Don’t let that worry you too much, especially if you’re in your first few races — the important thing is to aim for perfection every time, but that won’t always happen.
3. Starting Your Car Works Differently In Drag Strip Races
Drag Strip Races wouldn’t be too common during the first few chapters of the World Tour, which is the default race category and Project Cars GO’s equivalent of a campaign mode. While they may look simpler — and definitely much shorter — than a conventional race, you’ll need to do a few things differently, and with that in mind, that would mostly cover the way in which you start your car and prep it before the race. Aside from making a perfect start like you normally would elsewhere, you’ll need to burn out your tires and heat them up to further increase your speed once the race begins.
You can do this by holding on to your screen until the needle reaches the light blue optimum zone; once you’ve gotten it there, tap rapidly to keep it in the zone as it gets smaller and smaller. It’s similar to what you did to get a perfect start, though you will have to tap-and-hold first and keep your finger on the screen for a while before the quick-tapping process.
After you’ve burned out your tires and started your car, all you need to do is pay attention to the gates so you can shift gears at just the right time. Once you master the burnout/starting combo before the Drag Strip Race, there’s really nothing more to it!
4. Complete Missions To Earn Rewards And Make Progress In The Game
The Driver Hub, which you can access by tapping on your player avatar on the upper left corner of your screen, is your one-stop shop for everything related to your in-game character in Project Cars GO. You will particularly want to focus on the Missions sub-menu, which can be accessed by tapping on the third button from the top on the left-side menu — this is the button with what looks like a clipboard on it.
There are four different types of missions — Garage, Vehicle, Daily, and Achievements — and it’s the first type that you will get when you see those prompts from NPC characters from around the in-game universe. For example, one of the first Garage missions requires you to get a new custom paint color by combining four colors — once you’ve acquired at least four paint colors by opening boxes (usually after winning a race), combine them accordingly and you’ve completed that mission. You will see the type of reward in each mission window, and these may include cash, diamonds, Madbucks, or, for the Rare Import mission, a Rare Import Upgrade for disassembling one of your cars.
The Vehicle missions, once completed, allow you to factory-tune your vehicle and go beyond the stock parts that come with the car, or move from one stage of factory-tuned parts to another. For the first set of Vehicle missions, you will be asked to finish first place 15 times, compete in 15 Drag Strip races, and get “Perfect” status 45 times when passing the gates.
Daily missions may vary, but in any event, you will usually win free boxes for completing the missions within the course of the day. Obviously, these are limited-time missions, but they may include performing a certain type of upgrade on your car, winning a given number of races, or participating in a specific number of races in a certain mode.
Lastly, Achievements are tasks that can be completed organically with no time limit, and are more of car and race-related milestones, such as reaching level 15 for your Engine, Suspension, Tyres, and Gearbox upgrades, completing a certain number of races in Normal, Hard, or Extreme difficulty, competing in a given number of Time Trial or Daily Invitational races, and so on.
You can get different types of boxes for completing the Achievements, and while you can complete many of them just by playing the game naturally, it’s always helpful to head to the Missions menu and go to Achievements to give yourself a better idea of what exactly needs to be done.
As a bonus tip, Vehicle Missions will be different from car to car, so don’t be surprised to see a fresh set of missions in this category once you purchase or unlock a new car!
5. You Can Replay Races At Any Time In World Tour
Now there are some missions that may be harder to complete than others, such as the requirement to complete 15 Drag Strip Races — how can you do this when there are only a handful in the first season of the World Tour? You may also want to revisit a certain race you’ve already completed to test a new car you’ve purchased or unlocked, or maybe to hone your skills in preparation for the next new race. There’s also the possibility you’re trying to beat your best time with your newly upgraded ride, or trying to get three medals after only ending up with one or two in your first try.
Fortunately, Project Cars GO isn’t like some other mobile racing games in the sense that it allows you to replay races you’ve already completed in the World Tour. You can simply select the racing mode, choose the chapter, and go to the right side of the screen to choose any of the available races. However, there are still a couple things that you will need to remember before giving these races another go.
Considering that you’ll be spending the same amount of Fuel to replay a race, this is best done on an occasional basis or for mission completion purposes. And you obviously won’t be able to get the onetime rewards for earning medals for the first time — if you already got three medals in the first try, all you’ll be getting is the Participation prize.
6. Upgrade Your Cars Regularly!
At the bottom of the garage screen, you will see five buttons — from left to right, these are Cars, Boxes, Customise, Upgrades, and Go Race! The Upgrades sub-menu is where you will need to go if you want to improve your currently selected car, and there are four different types of upgrades you can perform. You can upgrade your engine to improve your car’s Top Speed, your tires to improve Acceleration, your suspension to improve Cornering, and your gearbox to improve Shifting. Different parts have different tiers, with higher-tier parts having much higher base and potential stats than the lower-tier ones.
When upgrading parts, you will spend a progressively higher amount of cash as you level them up. That may leave you at a quandary if you’re planning to purchase a new car, but if you’re still a beginner in the game, you won’t need additional cars just yet. There’s no waiting involved when upgrading parts from level 1 to level 5, but once a part reaches level 6, that’s when you will need to wait at least two minutes before the upgrade is completed.
You can choose to pay some diamonds in order to speed up or skip the waiting time, but this isn’t very advisable, considering how short the wait time is for the more common parts. Take note as well that there are two tuning branches for your part upgrades once you make it to level 5 — General and Category — with the former covering the overall performance of your car and the latter affecting how it does in its specific category of cars.
You can also add some Mods, or modifications, to your vehicles’ technical configurations, but in order to be able to use these parts, you will need to complete certain chapters, or series, in the World Tour. These Mods are the special parts we mentioned earlier that are available in the boxes, and these are manufacturer-specific; that means you cannot use a Ford mod on a Toyota or vice versa! However, you also have the option to sell parts that you feel are too common to keep around, or parts that you might not need because of the rarity of the make/car they are designed for.
Next, you can complete the Vehicle Missions, which we discussed above, in order to change your car’s vehicle level from Stock, or from the next vehicle level to the next. This further improves your vehicle’s performance, though those who are just starting out can disregard this for the meantime.
Make sure you are performing upgrades to your vehicle on a regular basis, and as long as you have more than enough cash from the races you’ve won or completed. This keeps your car competitive and improves your chances of winning, as the quality of your opponents will gradually increase as you complete more races and series.
And we haven’t even mentioned the different difficulty levels — as you move from Normal to Hard to Extreme, you can definitely expect better-quality cars and opponents joining you in the field, so it pays to have a well-upgraded vehicle at the ready.
7. Purchasing New Cars – Should You Do This Regularly, And If So, When?
There are dozens of vehicles available to collect in Project Cars GO, and you may be wondering when would be the best time to buy another one after racing your first car and enjoying quite a successful run in the World Tour and other modes. We would suggest waiting it out until you’ve sufficiently leveled up your first car, and once you do, it may be best to spend immediately on a Tier 3 car whose stats are superior, or at least similar to the first one. As you move up from tier to tier, you’ll see small statistical differences between cars in the same tier, so this is something you’ll want to look at closely before making the purchase.
Now you may be thinking that this is a game where less is more, where it’s best to focus on just a few cars instead of going by the “gotta catch ‘em all” Pokemon philosophy. That’s definitely true to a certain extent, but you will still need to have multiple cars during your time playing Project Cars GO. At some point, your mechanic will advise you that once your car gets Factory Tuning, it will no longer be an all-around threat in all race types, but rather one that performs much better in a specific race type than it does in others.
That means you’re going to have to have different vehicles with different specializations, so inasmuch as you may want to keep things simple, you’ll ultimately need to buy more when you can afford it. We should also add that in the World Tour, you will required to only use cars from a certain tier for specific season — for example, you can only use Tier 1 cars in Season 1, only Tier 2 cars in Season 2, and so on.
Most cars can be purchased with cash or with diamonds, though there are also some rare cars that can exclusively be found when you open boxes purchased at the Box Shop. And speaking of boxes, that is another, arguably more cost-effective way to unlock more cars and add them to your collection, though that’s something to talk about on a separate tip in this guide.
8. Login Everyday And Claim Your Daily Bonuses!
Even if it’s just for a few seconds and you don’t actually get to race, we would strongly advise you to open Project Cars GO at least once a day in order to redeem your daily bonuses. These can be accessed by tapping on the calendar button (second from top) in the Driver Hub menu, and a look at the daily rewards will show you all the prizes you can redeem simply by logging into the game at least once a day. These rewards include cash, diamonds, Madbucks, and boxes, and the quality — and quantity — of the rewards will improve as you keep making those daily logins.
For example, you will only be getting 250 Bronze Madbucks as your day 4 daily bonus, but that will improve to 12 Gold Madbucks by day 25 — granted, 12 is much fewer than 250, but Gold Madbucks are extremely rare in comparison to the Bronze ones! You will also get 150 Diamonds as your day 27 bonus — a huge increase from the 5 Diamonds you get on day 6. That’s a pretty good reward for logging in at least once for close to a month!
Rewards reset automatically after 28 days, and all Daily Bonuses shall be transferred to your in-game Mailbox, where you can redeem them.
9. Make Your Car More Unique And Change Things Up With Customizations
The Customise menu can be accessed by tapping on the third button on the bottom of the main screen, and this is where you can apply new paint jobs to your cars or create new colors from the paints you may have acquired from opening those boxes. Go to the Mix Paint section by tapping on the palette-shaped icon, and you’ll be taken to a screen where you can simply tap on four colors (no more, no less) and combine them to create a new custom color — based on actual color theory, these combinations might not make too much sense, but they are what they are, and the result will always be a color that isn’t available among the stock options.
That’s one of the many ways you can make your cars stand out from the rest, but it’s free of charge, and these custom colors can be used on any and all of the vehicles you currently have! Simply go to the Special Paint section to apply the new custom color on your car.
Aside from the custom colors, as well as the stock options available in the Paint sub-menu, you can apply different patterns, as well as revert to your car’s stock livery or choose a different one, if available. All of these customization options cost a few hundred cash to apply, so you may want to go easy on flashier paint jobs — or avoid using the stock colors and focus on using the new ones you created — in order to save a bit of your common currency.
10. Purchase Boxes With Your Madbucks To Get More Parts, Paints, And Even Cars
The Boxes menu can be found in between Cars and Customise at the bottom of the main/garage screen, and going here will allow you to buy Bronze, Silver, or Gold Boxes with your Madbucks. A Bronze Lucky Box costs 500 Bronze Madbucks, a Silver one costs 300 Silver Madbucks, and a Gold one costs 24 Gold Madbucks — as the rarity increases, so does the quality of the items inside, so what can you expect when you open each of these boxes?
For the Bronze Boxes, these typically come packed with cash, diamonds, and car parts, usually of the Basic or Intermediate Mod variety — you’ll normally get five items inside these boxes, which are also given out as rewards in certain situations. It’s also possible to end up with a new car, though the odds of that happening aren’t too likely — tap on the small “I” on the top right in order to view the chances of ending up with a certain item inside the box.
It’s with the Silver and Gold Boxes where you can unlock new cars, and the main difference here is that you’ll be more likely to end up with a higher-tier vehicle when you open a Gold Box as opposed to a Silver one.
If you’re opening multiple boxes, the game will do what it could to help you avoid getting duplicates — as explained in the info sections for each of the box types, you will get one item from the rows on the left for each roll, and you cannot get items from the same row twice.
11. Test New Cars And Earn More Rewards In The Daily Invitationals
While you will usually be playing the World Tour, given how many races it has (close to 2,000 overall across all seasons), one other mode you’ll be introduced to as a beginner or intermediate player is the Daily Invitationals. This mode allows you to race a loaned vehicle, which means you’ll essentially be testing higher-tier cars and getting a feel for the more powerful cars that are available in Project Cars GO.
The same mechanics apply when it comes to starting your car, shifting gears, and going through the braking zone, but there are some other differences to take note of, including the fact that these races allow you to complete a full lap on a race track — again, the tracks here include real-life ones such as Laguna Seca and Monza. Another key difference? You cannot replay any of the races in the Daily Invitationals like you can in World Tour— these are onetime races that can be completed only once per day, so you’ll need to make the most out of the opportunity you get!
Daily Invitationals races cost only three Fuel to compete in, though the tradeoff here is that you’ll be earning fewer cash and Madbucks for getting three medals. You will also earn Tournament Points depending on how many medals you end up with at the end of the race, and these can enable you to get better rewards if you’ve got enough of them. It’s always good to race as often as you could in this game mode, so don’t limit yourself to the World Tour!
12. Completing Seasons In World Tour – What To Expect
The final race of a season in World Tour will always be different from your typical races in this mode, and the first thing you may notice is that it’ll cost you a lot more fuel in order to compete — for example, the last race of Season 1 will cost you 11 fuel to enter, as opposed to 5 for all other races in here. When you actually enter the race — or shortly before that — you will likely notice that the finale is much longer than the actual races.
Regular ones usually take less than a minute to complete, but the final race of a season may take more than twice, or even thrice as long! Of course, you can expect tougher competition, so you’ll need to focus extra-hard on the gates when tapping, holding, and/or releasing.
Just as usual in World Tour, you can replay the finale if you don’t get enough medals or if you aren’t able to win it. And you’ll definitely want to do that right away, because you will get considerably better cash and Madbucks rewards, as well as a Season Reward Box that can come with more cash, diamond, paint, and/or Mods, and more importantly, a free car from a higher tier that you can use for the next season.
You can still purchase cars or get them as a prize from a Silver or Gold Box, but it’s certainly nice to get one free new car that could save you some cash and other resources if you choose to use it in the new season.
And with that we concluder our beginner’s guide for Project Cars GO. If you happen to know additional tips or tricks for the game, feel free to let us know in the comments!