Every car has the ability to fire tiny pellets at other cars. If you're lucky, your "bullet" will hit your opponent at just the right time to make them miss the next turn, but the chances of that are small. Even with a dead-on impact, the other car simply rocks a bit forward on its carriage, then goes back to racing as if nothing had happened. If you want to stand more of a chance to affect your enemies, then you need to stick with proper application of the power-ups.

There are six "action bonuses" in all, each triggered by the space bar: Boost, which gives you a couple of seconds of slightly-faster motion; Levitation, which causes all other cars to hover for two seconds, during which time they can't turn; Mines, which drops four obstacles behind your car; Invisibility, which renders your car unseeable to both your opponents and you; Dark Spiral, that restricts your viewpoint, no matter which camera mode you're using, to a small tunnel surrounded by blackness for about ten seconds; and Master, that randomly chooses a car as the recipient of a repellent electrical charge for a few seconds. It's difficult to use some of these powerups effectively, and even when used, they don't seem to make much difference in the overall race.

There are four modes of play in MiniOne Racing: Leagues, Free Tracks, Equilibrium, and Jump. The first option is where you'll unlock other circuits and difficulty levels. Free Tracks is where you can choose whichever track you'd like to race on. Equilibrium is a time trial in which you navigate through a track composed mostly of single-lane roads. If you fall off the track, five seconds is added to your time. Jump has you attempting to grab a couple of Boost powerups to time a jump just right to get the maximum distance out of it.

There is also a multiplayer option, featuring up to four simultaneous players. Maybe this will be more like Mario Kart as well, in that it's always more fun to play against a human opponent than the computer. I'm hoping that's the case. MiniOne Racing isn't a bad game, it's just kind of behaviorally challenged in places. If it were to strengthen the bullets you fire, make handling a little different, maybe offer cars that offered different specs and abilities -- in a word, if there were just more to this game, I could recommend it a little better. But there are other racing games out there that feature better options, and some of those are actually free, which makes this game slightly lacking. However, it's always best to see for yourself. You can download the demo right here on Big Download for Mac and PC. Smooth riding!