You build it. Then you have to drive it.

CrashFest is an arcade racer that never hands you a circuit. You snap one together out of hairpins, ramps, helixes and holes — and then the whole field races it for points, everybody bolts on one more piece, and you race it again.

By round five the track is three times the length, four people have left mines on it, and that lovely chicane you were so pleased with is the exact reason you are last.

No level select. No track designers. Just whatever six drivers thought was a good idea at the time.

Everyone gets a turn with the track

• 27 snap-together pieces — hairpins, sweepers, chicanes, banked curves, ramps, four helixes, and five with holes straight through the road

• One piece per racer, per round, handed out in finishing order

• The bots build too. They pick at random, which is exactly as dangerous as it sounds

• Start from nothing if you like — an empty grid and a field laying the first circuit together

• Save a track you are proud of and bring it back another night

Racing, with the gloves off

• Seven power-ups — shotgun, landmine, barrier, tyre stack, tow line, shield and a homing missile that picks its own target

• A wreck is not the end of your round. You wait at the next gate as a ghost and rejoin the moment a survivor reaches it

• Get left behind far enough that the camera cannot hold you and you are gone. Keep up

• Dropped hazards are permanent. Mines and barriers outlive the round, so by round four the track is visibly a place where four races have already happened

• Armco down both edges — or switch it off, and a mistake costs you the race instead of a tenth

Three ways to play with no track at all

• SUMO — six cars on a rooftop with no parapet and a hole in the middle. Last one still up there wins

• BOMB TAG — walled roof, one bomb, one fuse. Touch somebody to hand it on. The fuse does not reset

• TURF — the floor is carved into a slice each and there is one ball. Every second it sits in your slice, you score. Nobody is ever eliminated

On one screen, on one sofa

• Six cars on the grid — friends and bots come out of the same six seats

• Bots yield. Somebody picking up a controller is never told the race is full

• Up to four gamepads, Xbox and PlayStation both mapped properly, with keyboard blocks for anyone left over

• Pick your colour and your name — the lobby remembers both

• A match runs to a points target: around a quarter of an hour, five rounds, and a track that grows the whole way through