The double-decker bus in Death Chase corners exactly the way you’d expect a double-decker bus to corner: badly, and usually right into whatever obstacle you were trying to avoid.

Picking a Vehicle in Death Chase

Death Chase gives you 15 vehicles to choose from, ranging from ordinary cars and trucks to a campervan, an ambulance, a double-decker bus, and a proper Formula 1 racer, and none of them handle the same. Heavier vehicles like the bus survive more contact but struggle through tight jump sections, while lighter cars fly through ramps but fall apart faster under fire.

New players tend to default to whichever vehicle looks fastest on paper, without considering how a track’s specific obstacles punish poor handling. That mismatch is a common reason early races feel harder than they should.

• Heavy vehicles: better for ramming rivals, worse for chained jumps
• Light vehicles: better for stunts and nitro building, worse for surviving weapon hits
• Balanced vehicles: a safer default while learning a new track layout

Players optimizing for star ratings tend to settle on one or two vehicles they know intimately, while players just enjoying the destruction rotate constantly for variety.

Building Nitro Through Stunts and Flips

Nitro in Death Chase comes from performing flips and stunts off ramps, not from picking up items on the track, which means the fastest players are often the ones taking the most air rather than the most direct racing line. A clean flip off a well-timed ramp can be the difference between finishing mid-pack and finishing first.

Early in the game, ramps are spaced generously enough that building nitro feels almost automatic. Once you reach tracks with tighter obstacle clusters, timing a flip without landing awkwardly into a trap becomes a genuine skill test.

The community shorthand for chaining several stunts back to back without a bad landing is usually just called a clean flip run, and it’s the fastest reliable way to keep nitro topped up through a full race.

Star Ratings and What They Actually Reward

Finishing a race in Death Chase earns you between 1 and 3 stars, and that range is tied to both your finishing position and how many tricks you landed along the way, not just crossing the line first. A first-place finish with sloppy driving can still net fewer stars than a third-place run full of clean stunts.

This surprises a lot of newer players, who assume winning the race outright guarantees a full star rating. It doesn’t, and figuring that out is usually the moment players start actually prioritizing stunts over raw speed.

Stars matter beyond bragging rights too, since they’re the currency behind most vehicle and upgrade purchases.

Weapons, Ramming, and Taking Out Rivals

Beyond straightforward racing, Death Chase lets you buy weapons and use direct ramming to knock rival vehicles off the track entirely, turning some races into as much of a demolition derby as a race. Timing a ram at the right moment on a narrow section of track can eliminate a rival competing for your star rating.

Some players treat weapons as core to the experience, while a smaller group of racing purists deliberately avoid buying them, preferring to win purely on driving and stunt execution. That’s one of the more openly debated preferences in the community.

Either approach is viable, but relying purely on weapons without upgrading your vehicle’s durability tends to backfire on the harder tracks.

Track Hazards and Obstacle Placement

Every track in Death Chase mixes jumps, traps, and obstacles designed to punish both careless driving and over-aggressive stunt attempts. Later tracks especially cluster hazards close together, leaving very little room to recover from a mistimed flip.

Reading a track’s layout before committing to a full-speed run through it saves far more races than raw reflexes alone. That’s a lesson most players learn the hard way after crashing into an obstacle they didn’t see coming at high speed.

Once you reach the tracks near the end of the roster, obstacle density alone becomes the primary difficulty spike, more than any single new mechanic.

How many vehicles are there in Death Chase?

Death Chase includes 15 vehicles total, spanning everyday cars and trucks to specialty options like an ambulance, a double-decker bus, and a Formula 1 racer, each with different handling and durability.

How do you get 3 stars in Death Chase?

A 3-star result depends on finishing in the top positions while also landing stunts and flips along the way, not just crossing the finish line first, since trick performance factors directly into the final rating.

Can you use weapons in Death Chase?

Yes, weapons and upgrades can be purchased with earned stars and used to ram or attack rival racers directly, though some players choose to skip weapons entirely in favor of pure driving skill.

Death Chase never pretends to be a clean racing sim, and that’s the appeal: watching a rival explode after a well-timed ram, or landing a flip chain seconds before the finish line, matters just as much as the actual position you cross it in.