• Turn-based racing/combat situations
  • Each player controls a team/gang of characters.
  • Racing and combat autoduel leagues run in all major towns
  • Highly detailed rules for movement, including rigid body physics, terrain properties, slipstreaming/drafting, per-chassis characteristics
  • Highly detailed rules for combat, including skills, specialisms, detailed weapon characteristics and recoil/splash effects, critical hits and detailed damage and injury resolution, damageable tyres, suspension, engines, weapons and chassis
  • Real real-time strategy: travel, healing, training, car modifications/repairs all run to a real-world timescale
  • Detailed economic simulation: trade, piracy, starvation. The economic cycles of Darkwind take months of real-world time, and are affected by trade conditions and the amount of piracy occurring on the road.
  • NPC gangs controlled by AI: pirates, traders, bountyhunters, autoduellers
  • Cars, trucks, motorcycles
  • Varying security levels allows greater rewards to be earned through greater risk, and allows the game to be challenging to both newbie and veteran alike
  • Player ownership of production facilities and warehouses & camps
  • Scheduling system for attacks on player or NPC-owned installations
  • Contracts of work (delivery, bodyguard, etc.) available from NPCs
  • Psionic powers available to a small number of gifted individuals
  • Mutants, sometimes available as player characters
  • Performance-enhancing drugs with side-effects, some addictive