SuperTuxKart is an open source Kart racing game for Linux, PC, Mac and Android. You can play offline and online against other players.

It features many different game modes with a variety of different tracks and arenas.

Find more here!

A great number of people have contributed to SuperTuxKart over the years.

Our current team is led by Alayan, co-leader of SuperTuxKart since 2019, and Sven, lead artist of the project after Samuncle’s departure.

Among the most significant past contributors are Hiker, project leader from 2006 to 2019, Auria who assisted him for a decade, Samuncle who was the game’s lead artist for many years, Devee who created and maintained the Android version, and Benau, who became co-leader after Hiker’s departure.

See our Team page for more information about the people behind SuperTuxKart!

GPU

The GPU is usually the limitation for STK’s performance. Cards meeting the minimal requirements have the OpenGL support to run the game, but require low resolution and low graphics for smooth play. Cards meeting or exceeding the recommended requirements can run STK’s most demanding track at 60FPS/1080p with the modern rendering pipeline on graphics 4.

• Recommended: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 950, AMD Radeon RX 460, or stronger; At least 1 GB VRAM (video memory).
• Minimal: NVIDIA GeForce 470 GTX, AMD Radeon 6870 HD series card or Intel HD Graphics 4000; At least 512 MB VRAM (video memory).

CPU

The CPU performance might be the limitation depending on graphics card and graphics setting, mostly for online play which is more CPU-intensive. Good CPU performance helps ensure high framerate and more importantly smoothness. For STK, single-thread performance is paramount.

• Recommended: Core i5-2400 single-thread performance or higher. This includes AMD Ryzen desktop CPUs, most Intel desktop CPUs since 2012 and recent mid-to-high end mobile CPUs.
• Minimal: Any Intel or AMD dual-cores processors. Very old models and low-clocked mobile parts may struggle, especially in online play.

Other requirements

• At least 1 GB of free RAM
• Disk space: 800MB

Optional

• (If you prefer playing with a joystick) A joystick with at least 6 buttons.

You can try your luck and run the game. STK features a fallback renderer which uses only OpenGL 2.1 / GLES 2 / DirectX 9 which should work on most devices, but it has no modern rendering pipeline.

The SuperTuxKart project as we know it exists since 2006, when Hiker began working on it, with roots in the older TuxKart.

Over the years, with the help of many contributors, the game grew to become a reference among open-source games, with steady improvements in graphics and gameplay alike.

Thanks to this recognition as well as its open nature, SuperTuxKart was and is used in many projects, including numerous academic papers and demos from major companies.

By the release of version 1.0 in 2019 with online multiplayer, SuperTuxKart was a mature project. Hiker passed the torch, and the project continued with a focus on polish and stability.

Now, our team is actively working on writing the next page of history with SuperTuxKart Evolution, with a myriad of novelties in the works.

You can consult our illustrated history of SuperTuxKart for more details about the game’s history.

No! The Mario Kart series is the most known of kart racers games, but there have been many others.

Some very old versions of STK tried to mimic Mario Kart, but this hasn’t been the case for a very long time. We sometimes look at it for inspiration, as we do with other kart games, but this is it.

Not only are there many significant differences in gameplay, but SuperTuxKart is evolving its own way and we are not trying to make it any closer to Mario Kart.

First, have a look at the Get involved page. It should contain all the information you need to start with coding, modeling, designing or whatever you’d like to do.

Before you start, you should contact the current developers and artists through the forum or the IRC and tell us what you want to achieve. This will greatly improve the chance that you contribution will be accepted.

Most items (bowling ball, cake, plunger) can be used backwards. Just fire them while looking backwards.

No!

The speed limit and speed boosts are exactly the same for all the karts, AI or human. In lower difficulties, the AI might even slow down on purpose. The powerup probabilities when grabbing a gift box are also identical. There are minor differences in how quickly the karts can steer from a direction to another, but it gives no meaningful advantage to the AI and isn’t meant to.

The AI can sometimes have superhuman reflexes to use powerups, but if a human presses the right button at the right time, he can achieve the same result. There is also a lot of room to outsmart it.

If you struggle to beat the AI, focus on improving your driving to crash as little as possible while going fast, and learn to use skidding. On higher difficulties, skidding is essential to beat the AI.

Yes! After creating an online STK account inside the game and connecting with it, select the “Online” button in the main menu then “Global networking” to access networked gameplay through the internet. You can host your own server for others to play on, or join community-hosted servers. For the best experience, a stable connection and a low ping to the server are important.

When playing with a keyboard, you may experience issues when pressing multiple keys simultaneously, for instance trying to use nitro while accelerating and turning. In such situations, some keypress may not register. This is however not a bug of SuperTuxKart, but a phyiscal limitation of your keyboard, most keyboards can only handle so many keys pressed at the same time (for more detailed information, please check here). The solution is to use a gaming input device (gamepad, or gaming keyboard), or tweak the keys configuration to find keys that your keyboard will be able to register simultaneously.

This could include the kart always going left, or randomly braking, or other similar weirdness where the game seems to believe you pressed a key but you did not. If this happens, try going in the options menu, on the input screen, and check if you have gamepads there. Try to disable all gamepads except the device you are using. Sometimes, bogus input can be received from gamepads or other similar devices that the OS sees as a gamepad.

If there’s a penguin in the middle of the circle, someone’s shot a plunger at your face. You can do that to others by shooting the plunger backwards (see the FAQ entry about throwing items backwards).

Yes! See the Wiimote page for details.

First, look at the STK bug tracker and open a new issue if your problem hasn’t been reported yet.

Note: this applies to the 1.5 version, for the next major release this page will be updated.

• On Windows: It is in %APPDATA%/supertuxkart/config-0.10 (you can enter that in the Explorer and it will take you there).
• On Linux: It is either in $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/supertuxkart/config-0.10 (first choice), ~/.config/supertuxkart/config-0.10 (second choice) or in ~/.supertuxkart/config-0.10 (third choice).
• On macOS: It is in ~/Library/Application Support/supertuxkart/config-0.10. Note that this directory may be hidden.
• On Android: It is in /storage/emulated/0/Android/data/org.supertuxkart.stk/files/supertuxkart/home/supertuxkart/config-0.10.
• With Snap: It is in ~/snap/supertuxkart/current/.config/supertuxkart/config-0.10.
• With Flatpak: It is in ~/.var/app/net.supertuxkart.SuperTuxKart/config/supertuxkart/config-0.10.

You can also watch the output in the terminal to see if there is a note on where the config files are stored or search for a file called “config.xml”.

This happens sometimes; The developers should be aware of that and it should be fixed soon. If GitHub Actions says that the current Git version compiles, but it doesn’t do so for you, then propably something is wrong with your compiler setup. (Check if you have all dependencies, re-run CMake, …)

The intended in-game way is to play story mode and beat all challenges.

If however you want to unlock everything without playing story mode, you can also cheat by editing a config file. Open the folder mentioned above in question “Where does STK store the user config file”. From there, open the folder “config-0.10” then open the file “players.xml”. Replace all occurrences of “none” with “hard” (or “easy” or “medium”, indicating the highest level at which you have solved a challenge).