Review · Editor's pick
art of rally
The prettiest driving game your phone can run, and one almost nobody has found. Bring a controller.
Funselektor's low-poly Group B rally, brought to phones by Noodlecake and all but invisible on the charts. Here is the honest read.
- Platform
- Android + iOS
- Installs
- 10k+
- Rating
- 3.2 (GP)
- Price
- Paid
In-game screenshot · via Google Play
The feel
You look straight down on a small, beautifully lit car and thread it through a rally stage that unfolds like a diorama. The camera pulls back on the fast bits and tucks in tight through the trees, and the whole thing has a hush to it. Sardinia at dusk, Norway under grey light, Kenya baked orange. Weight shifts as you lift off, the back steps out on gravel, and catching a slide feels earned rather than automatic. It is genuinely one of the best-looking driving games you can put on a phone, and it treats speed as something calm and precise instead of loud.
The catch
Here is the part the store rating is shouting about. On pure touch controls, art of rally is hard to love. A game this precise wants analogue input, and dragging your thumb across glass turns delicate corrections into a wrestling match. That 3.2 average is mostly frustration, not a bad game. Plug in a Bluetooth gamepad and the score in your head jumps two full points. If you have no controller and no interest in getting one, this may not be your pick, and I would rather tell you that up front than sell you a disappointment.
History
art of rally comes from Funselektor Labs, which is essentially one person: Canadian developer Dune Casu. He debuted with Absolute Drift in 2015, a stark black-and-white drift game, then spent years on this follow-up, which landed on PC in 2020. The low-poly styling and the deep love of the Group B and Lancia era made it an indie favourite well before it reached phones. The 2024 mobile port was handled by Noodlecake in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. So the pipeline runs Canadian developer to Canadian publisher, which is a quietly nice thing to point out from a list written in Toronto.
Buy it if you own a gamepad.
If you own a controller, this is the first thing I would install from the whole list. It is the rare mobile port that keeps everything that made the original special, and its tiny install count means you would be discovering something most people walked right past. Just go in knowing the touch controls are the weak point, and set your expectations by the gamepad, not the glass.