Getting started
Hitflag runs on macOS 12 or later (Apple silicon and Intel) and Windows 10 or 11 (64-bit). Download it from hitflag.com.
macOS
Open the disk image and drag Hitflag to Applications. The game is signed and notarized by Apple, so it opens without a warning. A copy opened from the disk image or from Downloads offers to move itself to Applications, because only a copy there can update itself.
Windows
Run Hitflag-…-windows-setup.exe. It installs into Program Files with a Start menu shortcut and an uninstaller. The installer is not signed yet, so Windows may say "Windows protected your PC": choose More info → Run anyway. The zip works too: right-click, Extract All, then run Hitflag.exe from the folder.
Updates
The game checks for a new version by itself. When one is out, the corner of the menu says so and Settings offers Update. On a Mac it installs as you quit; on Windows it downloads the new installer for you to run. A copy from Steam is updated by Steam.
Your garage and the menu
The first time it starts, Hitflag asks where your garage is: pick a spot on the world map. A spot inside one of the ten places takes that place; anywhere else is built from its real streets, which takes under a minute the first time and needs an internet connection. From then on the game opens there: your car rolls out through a neon gate and cruises the neighbourhood with the traffic. Touch any driving control to take the wheel; five seconds after you let go, it drives itself again. Settings → Your garage moves it.
Tab (pad: Start; Esc too) shows and hides the menu; the street keeps moving behind it. The menu is a card for each mode, Flag Capture, Street Race, Demolition and Hitzom, and a bar along the foot: Location (the world map, for the next match's place), Garage (your car) and Settings. Up and down move through the cards and onto the bar, left and right along it; Enter opens a card's panel:
- Flag Capture and Demolition: Play solo, Quick match, Private game, Rules (free-for-all or teams; Wreck or Last Car Running), Cars, Place.
- Street Race: Play solo, Rules (Sprint, Circuit, Drift or Drag), Route, Laps (Circuit), Cars, Place.
- Hitzom: Play solo, Cars, Place.
A match's Main menu brings you back to your street.
The modes
Four games on the same real streets. Flag Capture and Demolition play solo against bots or online; Street Race and Hitzom are solo for now. Each mode explains its rules on a card the first time you play it.
Flag Capture
One flag and every car after it. A round goes like this:
- Grab. One flag stands somewhere in the city, marked by a beam. Drive through it and it rides on your car.
- Run. Everyone else now hunts you. Take the flag to the drop zone the arrow points at. The carrier is a little slower (92% of top speed) and its boost refills more slowly.
- Hit and steal. Ram the carrier at 9 m/s or more (about 32 km/h) and the flag is yours, with 4 seconds in which nobody can take it from you. The car you robbed waits 8 seconds before it may take it back.
- Escape. Reach the drop zone to score a capture. A new flag drops somewhere else.
The first to 3 captures wins, or whoever leads when the 7 minutes run out; a tie goes to sudden death, where the next capture that breaks it wins. Play free-for-all or in two teams (a disc or a diamond on the roof shows the team), with 2 to 8 cars; bots fill every seat a person does not, on easy, normal or hard.
Street Race
Drive through the checkpoints in order: the next one is a magenta pad on the road with a beam and the arrows pointing at it, the finish is gold. No flag and no power-ups; boost stays. In Sprint and Circuit a hit at 9 m/s or more takes up to a second of boost from the car you hit. The race ends when everyone is home, 8 seconds after you are, or at its time limit. Each route keeps your best time.
| Race | What it is |
|---|---|
| Sprint | A to B, about 2 km, against the bots |
| Circuit | Laps of about 1.5 km, 1 to 9 of them (Laps), back over the line each time |
| Drift | Alone on a winding course of about 900 m. Points for speed and angle; keep drifting and the multiplier climbs to ×5, banked after 1.2 seconds straight and lost on a wall or a car. Medals at 4, 8 and 13 points a metre. |
| Drag | One on one down the place's straightest 400 m. Throttle before GO jumps the start; react in under a quarter of a second for a perfect start. Shift up with Shift (pad: right bumper) near the redline. |
Route steps through the place's own route, others the game makes and yours; Enter on it opens the route editor (below).
Demolition
No flag, only damage. Every hit hurts by how hard it lands; the car that did the ramming takes half.
- Wreck. Damage you deal scores, and the blow that wrecks a car scores 25 more. A wrecked car is back in 5 seconds near the pack, with 2 seconds of protection. The hot zone, an orange junction that moves every minute or so, doubles your points. Three minutes; a tie goes to overtime.
- Last Car Running. A red line closes in on the zone over two minutes, and outside it a car loses health. A wrecked car becomes a ghost; each wreck scores a point for every car still running, so the last car wins.
Demolition has power-ups of its own: Armour (no damage for 8 seconds), Repair (mends three quarters of what you have lost), Mine, Magnet (pulls nearby cars into you) and Sledgehammer (6 seconds of four times the damage from your front), with Rammer, Boost Refill, Pulse, Slick, Disrupter, Mirror (a ram's damage turned back on the rammer), Decoy and Anchor.
Hitzom
Three minutes in a city overrun by the dead, in its own green-lit look, with no traffic. Run them down at 4 m/s or more for points; the most points wins.
| The dead | What they do | Points |
|---|---|---|
| Shamblers | Ignore you and wander into the road | 10 |
| Runners | Flee when a car comes close | 30 |
| Grabbers | Rush you and cling on, four at most, each one slowing you; a hard turn or a boost throws one off, a crash all of them | 15, or 20 thrown off |
| Brutes | Bump you back and break your chain, unless you boost into them | 60 |
| Spitters | Spit acid ahead of you: a glowing slick that spins you out | 25 |
| The behemoth | Comes out three times a match, stomps cars near it, and takes three boost hits | 100 a hit, 500 when it falls |
Kills within 3 seconds of each other chain: every five, the multiplier steps up, to ×5. A tie goes to sudden death.
The world map and routes
Location (and each panel's Place) opens the world map. It starts on the whole world; zoom into a city to see its places, or onto any street. The footprint shows what the game will build there, green when it is ready. A place built from the map takes under a minute the first time, needs an internet connection, and is kept on your computer.
| On the map | Keyboard and mouse | Gamepad |
|---|---|---|
| Move | WASD, or drag | Left stick |
| Zoom | Q E, or the wheel; double click zooms in | Triggers |
| Go to a spot | Click it | |
| Find a place by name | F or / | |
| Choose a row, select | ↑↓, Enter | D-pad, A |
| Step back out | Esc | B |
The route editor (Street Race → Route → Enter) draws on the same map:
- Sprint and Circuit: click a street to put the start, then the next points; the route follows the streets between them. Drag a point to move it, or drag the line onto another street to go that way. Right click removes a point (keyboard: Delete at the cross; pad: X). Backspace or Ctrl/⌘+Z undoes. Reverse runs it the other way.
- Drift: drag along the streets to paint the course; right drag moves the map.
- Drag: click a street to put the line, then click the way, or drag out from the line to point it.
The editor shows the route's length, checkpoints and turns. Race this route starts it; Back keeps the route you had. Your routes are kept for each place and race.
Controls
| Action | Keyboard | Gamepad |
|---|---|---|
| Drive and steer | WASD or the arrows (mouse steering is a setting) | Left stick |
| Boost | X | A (south), or left stick click |
| Handbrake, drift | Space | X (west) |
| Burnout launch at a stop | Space held with W (the ring round your speed fills gold), then let go of Space | X held with the stick up |
| Launch at GO | Hold W through the countdown | Hold the stick up |
| Turn on the spot at a stop | Space held with A/D | X held with the stick left or right |
| Overdrive (your class's ultimate) | F | Right trigger |
| Use the power-up you hold (hold to charge a Pulse, let go to fire) | E | B (east) |
| Recover (back on the road) | R | Y (north) |
| Look back (hold) | Q or Z | Left bumper, or right stick click |
| Thrusters: leap, hold to keep your height (X in the air drives you on) | G | Left trigger |
| Air control: hold to level the car in the air, with the arrows to pitch and roll it (on Thrusters, flips) | Shift | Right bumper |
| Key | Does |
|---|---|
| Tab or Esc (pad: Start) | Shows and hides the menu; in a match it pauses |
| C (pad: View) | Camera: low chase, high chase, close, driver's seat |
| F2 P M L | Next place, number of cars, mode (free-for-all, teams, Wreck, Last Car Running), look; each starts a new match, offline only |
| U / T | Weather / civilian traffic |
| N (pad: d-pad down) / J | Minimap: three zooms / underglow colour |
| V / K | Sound / music on or off |
| F1 | Shows the controls in the game |
In menus the arrows or WASD (pad: d-pad) move, Enter or Space (pad: A) selects, Esc (pad: B) goes back, and M (pad: Y) opens the world map. At the end of a match, Enter or A starts the next one.
The cars
Three classes, each with its own Overdrive: a five-second ultimate that charges as you drift, draft behind another car and fly. Press F when the gauge is full.
| Class | Character | Overdrive |
|---|---|---|
| Tuner | Light (1,150 kg) and quick to turn, 189 km/h: the drifter | Vector Overclock: boost that keeps refilling, fierce acceleration, razor handling |
| Muscle | The heaviest (1,750 kg) and the hardest hit, 180 km/h | Bulldozer: two and a half times the weight, ramming through whatever is in the way |
| Interceptor | The fastest on a straight, 214 km/h and 290 on boost | EMP Tether: locks onto the car ahead, reels it in and drains its boost |
Boost (X) refills by itself. Catching a drift cleanly pays some back, and driving close behind another car (drafting) pulls you along.
Power-ups
Glowing pickups wait on the streets. Drive through one to hold it, then press E to use it. A Pulse charges while you hold E and goes off as you let go. When a Seeker locks on to you, a warning shows where it comes from and how close it is.
| Power-up | What it does |
|---|---|
| Overdrive | Much faster for 6 seconds |
| Shield | Nobody can steal from you for 8 seconds, and it stops one attack (a Seeker, a Pulse, a slick) and breaks |
| Rammer | A lunge forward, and your next hit steals more easily and shoves harder (for 15 seconds) |
| Boost Refill | Fills your boost at once, and for 4 seconds it does not run out |
| Disrupter | After a short wind-up, cuts the power of cars within 35 m for 5 seconds: they limp on at a third of their speed |
| Pulse | Flings cars away from you, tumbling through the air: 23 m tapped, 40 m fully charged. It also sweeps away Seekers and mines, and sets oil alight |
| Seeker | A homing shot at the car ahead. The car it locks on to is warned, and a hard handbrake turn as it closes shakes it off |
| Slick | A strip of oil behind you for 2 seconds that spins cars out |
| Thrusters | Eight jets for 12 seconds: leap with G, hold it to keep your height while the gas lasts, X drives you on; Shift and the arrows flip and roll the car, and a flip landed clean scores |
| Mirror | For 6 seconds, the next attack bounces back on whoever made it: a ram, a Seeker, a Pulse |
| Decoy | A ghost of your car drives on down the street while you vanish from maps, markers, bots and Seekers for 4 seconds |
| Anchor | Three times heavier for 5 seconds: rams, throws and spins barely move you |
Places, looks, weather
Ten real neighbourhoods are built from OpenStreetMap at one and a half times life size: Istanbul (Cihangir & Beyoğlu, Nişantaşı, Kadıköy, Ataşehir), San Francisco (Russian Hill, Twin Peaks, Marina Ridge), Paris (Arc de Triomphe, Montmartre) and London (South Kensington). Choose one with Location, or build almost anywhere else on Earth from its real streets (the world map).
Four looks change the night: Rain Noir, City Night, Golden Hour and Synthwave; Hitzom has a look of its own. Every look's weather changes by itself in its own climate (U), or stays a storm, steady rain or dry. Civilian traffic (T) can be turned off.
Playing online
Flag Capture and Demolition play online; everyone needs the same version of the game. On the mode's panel:
- Quick match goes straight into a room of that mode and its rules (four or six seats). The room starts 3 seconds after it fills, or with bots after a minute.
- Private game opens the screen below.
On Private game:
- Play online joins an open game, or opens one for others to find.
- Host online makes a private game and shows a code: send it to your friends.
- Join with a code types in a friend's code.
- Host on this network plays with people on the same Wi-Fi; their games appear in the list. On Windows, allow Hitflag when the firewall asks, or friends cannot join.
Your name, at the bottom of the same list, is what players see on the games you host: press Enter, type it (up to 16 characters) and press Enter again. Until you choose one it is "Driver" and four digits.
Bots take the seats nobody has. The host starts each match; joiners wait for it.
Settings
Garage holds your car: the class, the underglow, the paint finish and the body (the class's own car or one of fifteen cyber bodies; a body changes only how your car looks). Settings holds the look, the weather, traffic, sound and the rest: bot difficulty, mouse steering and its sensitivity, rumble, window or full screen, the camera, camera shake, ambient occlusion and Your garage. When an update is out, Settings opens on it.
Underglow and finish change at once. A change only a new match can bring (the car, the body, the place, the cars, the mode, the look) waits: press Enter and the game asks Restart the match with these changes?. Press Enter again to start it, or Esc to keep editing.
Comfort
Storms bring lightning flashes, and hits shake the camera. If either bothers you, set Weather to steady rain or dry and turn Camera shake off. Read the health and safety warning before you play.
Troubleshooting
Friends cannot join my network game
Everyone has to be on the same network and the same version. On Windows, allow Hitflag through the firewall (Windows Security → Firewall → Allow an app).
The game or a match misbehaves
Send us the log with a line about what happened: on a Mac ~/Library/Logs/Hitflag/Hitflag/Player.log, on Windows %USERPROFILE%\AppData\LocalLow\Hitflag\Hitflag\Player.log. A log of every match is kept in a matches folder: on a Mac in ~/Library/Application Support/Hitflag/Hitflag, on Windows beside the log. These stay on your computer unless you send them.
Anything else
Write to hello@hitflag.com. We read everything.