As a result, successful racing here amounts to reading the road ahead, releasing and applying your throttle accordingly, and making clever use of the way your vehicle whips around the twists and turns of each course in order to steer it neatly into the next tricky challenge. The hairiest of these bends and lane switches are thankfully marked out from the rest of the track, allowing you to read the upcoming challenge with ease.
If the concept sounds simple, the execution is as tricky as you'll remember from playing with the real thing on your bedroom floor. If your car spins out of control entirely, an invisible hand will place it back on the track in the right direction, albeit at the cost of a time penalty. The better overall time you achieve over multiple laps, the more trophies you'll be awarded, and the more trophies you receive, the more track packs you'll unlock.
This is a game that not only plays like a lot of fun, it looks like a lot of fun too. Bright, bold and colorful, there's a geometric styling to the landscapes that's part Lego and part Minecraft, and each track pack takes in a different season of the year. It's not just the tracks that offer up plenty of variety either. There's a fun selection of cars to play with too, from the slow but steady hatchbacks, to hair-whitening supercars that whizz around the track like out-of-control fireworks.
We try not to place too much emphasis on price when it comes to mobile gaming - when you're talking a dollar here and there, you should probably value your time more than your money - but there's no getting away from the fact that Groove Racer is an incredibly generous offering. If you're willing to grind out better times for more trophies, you'll have no trouble unlocking the game's content, and the ads between tracks are very easy to dismiss.
By its nature, Groove Racer isn't a hugely sophisticated racing experience, but it is a fun one nevertheless. Some of the tracks can be a little frustrating, particularly those where the trickiest bends are obscured by environmental objects, but you'd be a bit daft not to dip into this throwaway but fun micro-racer.
Download Groove Racer (iOS)
