Everything you need to write about Coaster Race, in one page. Logos, screenshots, blurbs you can run word for word, and a tournament calendar that updates itself.
Pulled live from the site, so it's never out of date. All times US Eastern.
Weeklies are drop-in: nobody signs up for a season, and there's no penalty for missing weeks. Win any one of them and you qualify for the Champions final.
Written to be published unedited. Hit copy, paste, done.
Coaster Race is a free browser game built on a simple idea: roller coaster enthusiasts already carry an enormous amount of knowledge, and almost nothing asks them to use it competitively.
The game is a head-to-head duel. Players alternate naming real coasters, each chaining to the last through something they share — the same park, manufacturer or designer. Before the match each player is dealt three possible win conditions and picks one: an element like a non-inverting loop or a 200-foot drop, which scores whenever the chain produces a coaster that has it.
Both conditions stay visible all match, which is what makes it a game rather than a quiz. You know exactly what your opponent needs, so every ride is a choice between advancing your condition and starving theirs — against a good opponent, denial is often worth more than scoring. It rewards breadth over depth: knowing every coaster at one park won't get you far, but knowing which manufacturers built where will.
It runs in a browser, costs nothing, carries no advertising and sells nothing. It was built by one developer on a database of thousands of real rides.
From August 2026 it runs as a season, with a drop-in tournament every Tuesday evening — no sign-up, no streak, no penalty for missing weeks. Winning any Tuesday earns a gold medal beside that player's name on the public leaderboard for the rest of the season, and a place in an invitation-only Champions final in January made up of that season's weekly winners. An Open tournament also runs each year on National Roller Coaster Day, August 16, which anyone can enter. The winners of the Open and of Champions each receive an annual theme park pass.
Every tournament is a single-elimination bracket seeded by rating, resolves in about ninety minutes, and can be watched live by anyone at coasterrace.com.
Twenty seconds of a real match. Silent — nothing in it depends on audio.
Also available as a vertical cut for short-form video and an animated GIF for forums and Discord.
Click to download. Everything here is free to use.
Players alternate naming real coasters. Each one must connect to the previous through a shared park, manufacturer or designer. Name a coaster that doesn't connect, or run out of time, and you lose the turn.
Before the match, each player is dealt three possible win conditions — a specific element like a non-inverting loop or a 200-foot drop — and picks one. You score whenever the chain produces a coaster that has yours. Rarer elements need fewer points to win.
There's no hidden information. From the first turn you can see exactly what your opponent needs, and they can see what you need. That's what makes it a game of steering rather than guessing: every ride you name is a choice between advancing your own condition and starving theirs, and denying a good opponent is often worth more than scoring.
Single elimination. Players in the waiting room when the clock hits zero are seeded by rating; if the field isn't a power of two, the top seeds get first-round byes. Matches that produce no result within ten minutes are ruled in favour of the higher seed, so one abandoned game can't stall a bracket. A full field resolves in roughly ninety minutes.
The live bracket is public and updates in real time — anyone can follow every match without entering, and any match in progress can be spectated. It makes a workable stream overlay, and creators are welcome to use it as one.
A fan-made, free thing that exists because someone wanted it to, running its flagship event on the enthusiast community's own holiday. Nobody is being sold anything.
Coaster fandom has never really had a competitive format. This is an attempt at one — with a season, a qualification ladder and a final — and whether it takes is an open question worth watching.
A solo developer scraped and cleaned a roller coaster database, matched thousands of rides to images, and wrote a bracket engine that runs a tournament of any size unattended. Happy to go deep on any of it.
I'm Peter, and I built this on my own. I'm glad to help with anything:
