Beat That
Open the game- Brand
- Acura
- Year
- 2020
- Objective
- Awareness
- Industry
- Automotive
- Mechanic
- Racing & Sports
- Platform
- Web
- Agency
- Active Theory
- With
- Plan8
- With
- MullenLowe U.S.
Objective
Acura built the game to carry its "Less Talk, More Drive" TV campaign past the airing window into something audiences could act on themselves, reaching a younger, mobile-first audience that ad breaks rarely catch. It doubled as a showcase for the brand's model line and racing pedigree, following on from Acura's earlier Facebook Instant Games experiment with the ILX.
Solution
You open a link on your phone or laptop and you're straight on the starting line — no app to install. Each of six short circuits pits you against the clock in a different Acura, from the 1991 NSX up to the Type S concept, and each lap is styled to a different era of video-game graphics, from blocky 8-bit to full photorealism, right down to the speedometer and pause screen. Lap times run 30 to 60 seconds, so a run costs almost nothing and you're straight back in for another go. Beat the target time and the next car and track unlock; your best lap also lands on a daily and all-time leaderboard for that track. You can send your time to a friend as a challenge, and they race against a ghost car built from your exact run, then share their own result as a car-and-time card or a branded GIF.
Results
The game logged over 300,000 plays in its first week across 179 countries with no paid promotion, averaged more than 7 minutes per session, and drew a 13% returning-visitor rate.
- 1
The game loads directly at a browser URL (or as a Facebook Instant Game) with nothing to download, opening on a black loading screen with a progress bar.
- 2
An animated 8-bit title screen shows the starting arch and car with a prompt to enable sound; the race begins immediately from this screen in third-person view, with no level-select or menu.
- 3
Controls are taught through on-screen prompts layered over the live drive rather than a separate tutorial: the car auto-accelerates, the player holds left or right arrow keys to steer, and presses the space bar to brake.
- 4
The track is marked by checkpoint gates and a finish arch with directional arrows on the road; the heads-up display stays empty aside from the tutorial prompts, which include a tip to find the optimal racing line, and clears completely once the tutorial ends.
- 5
Players can pause mid-race, with the pause screen rendered in the current level's visual style.
- 6
Finishing a lap shows the time to the thousandth of a second against a target time; falling short restarts the short lap for another attempt, while beating it unlocks the next car, track, graphical era, music, and interface.
- 7
Six levels each pair a different real or concept Acura with its own handling and a distinct track and video-game visual era, progressing from 8-bit graphics through successive console-style generations to near-photorealism.
- 8
Players enter a three-character initial to post their lap time to a per-track leaderboard showing daily and all-time top 10s, and can challenge the leader to race against a ghost recording of that run.
- 9
After a lap, players can generate a shareable card showing their car, level, and lap time to challenge friends via social media or messaging, inviting them to try to beat it.
