Living Room 500

One finger is the throttle. The whole race fits on one screen.

Living Room 500 is a toy race track built on the floor, seen from above like a kid standing over it. Your car steers itself, because it rides in a groove. Press anywhere to go, let go to slow down. That is the entire control scheme, and it never changes – not on a later track, not in another mode, not ever.

The whole skill is knowing when to lift. Every corner has a speed it forgives and a speed it does not. Push too hard and the back end wiggles, the motor climbs a note, and the tires start to whisper – lift in time and the car settles back into the groove. Hold on anyway and you tumble off the track. Then a giant hand reaches down, picks your car up, and sets it gently back where it left. Nobody loses a life. Nobody starts over. A crash costs you seconds and nothing else.

Six circuits on the floor

Race a friendly first oval, a long hairpin, a chicane run, a criss-cross figure-8 where you cross your own path, a detour across the kitchen tile, and a sprawling course that takes over the whole room. Finish first or second to open the next one. Like the classic slot car sets, each track is a loop of pieces laid out on the rug, and the whole layout is always on screen – no scrolling, no camera to fight.

Three cars, three rivals

Start in the forgiving yellow schoolbus, then earn a slippery wedge racer and a little red rocket that only a practiced hand can hold on the road – each one trades grip against speed. Your rivals have personalities too: one drives clean and steady, one barrels into corners far too hot and pays for it, and one simply cannot keep its mind on the race.

Three ways to play

• Race – five laps against the field, for a cup and a new track.
• Best lap – alone on the track, chasing your own record on every circuit.
• Free play – no rivals, no lap count, no finish line. The toy just runs for as long as you want to drive it.

Watch out for the floor

A runaway marble rolls across the track. A wrinkle in the rug launches you into a hop. A dusty patch makes one corner slicker than it looks. And from the third lap onward, the cat takes an interest – its shadow appears a full lap before the paw does, at the same spot every time, so you always get fair warning.

A promise to parents

• No ads. No in-app purchases. No links out of the game. Pay once, own it.
• No internet access at all – the app never asks for the network permission, so it cannot connect to anything. It works in airplane mode, in the car, anywhere.
• No accounts, no sign-in, no data collection of any kind.
• Nothing to read to play. Tracks are pictures, car stats are little bars, and every button is an icon.
• No way to fail. There are no lives, no game-over screen, and no sad noises – a crash is a funny moment, not a punishment.
• Put the tablet down mid-race and the game picks up exactly where it stopped, even if the tablet shut the app down in the meantime.

Where to get it

Amazon Appstore, for Fire tablets – 2.99 USD, no ads, no purchases: Living Room 500 on Amazon
More platforms may come later – this page is the home for all of them.

Living Room 500 · Privacy · Support · Published by GameShoutOut.