Overview

X-Moto is a free and open source 2D motocross platform game in which physics do most of the talking. You ride a motocross bike seen from the side, balancing throttle, brakes and body rotation to cross levels built from floating islands. The goal is always the same: collect every strawberry scattered around the level, then touch the sunflower to finish it. Early levels are about surviving the terrain at all; the harder ones are about doing it against the clock, racing your own best times and the public world records.

Key Features

• Physics-first riding — accelerate, brake and jerk the bike back and forth to keep it under control on impossible-looking terrain; rotate on the spot to turn around.
• Strawberries and sunflowers — a simple, readable goal system, with variations in later levels that change the rules.
• Large library of user-made levels — the game can connect to the web to download extra levels, and you can point it at your own level host.
• World records and high-score lists — download public high scores in-game, or configure your own WebHighscoresURL for a private score list.
• Replay recording — set StoreReplays to record runs automatically, then save a replay when you finish (or die).
• Level editor workflow — levels are SVG-based and converted with the svg2lvl/Inksmoto tooling for Inkscape, so you can draw your own maps.
• Configurable controls and screenshots — keyboard bindings are remappable, and F12 saves a screenshot as JPG or PNG (ScreenshotFormat).
• Proxy-aware networking — supports HTTP, SOCKS4 and SOCKS5 proxies for restricted networks.
• Cross-platform and packaged — Windows, Linux, macOS and FreeBSD builds, plus distro packages (Debian/Ubuntu xmoto, Fedora, Slackware) and source tarballs.

Why Use It

X-Moto is one of the cleanest examples of a “one mechanic, endless depth” game: the whole challenge comes from how the bike’s physics interact with hand-drawn terrain, so the difficulty curve scales indefinitely without new systems. It is lightweight enough to run on modest hardware, it is genuinely cross-platform, and it is still maintained — release 0.6.3 landed in March 2025 and the repository continues to receive commits. Because the game and its source are GPL-licensed, you can run, modify and redistribute it freely, and the community level ecosystem means there is effectively always something new to ride.

Use Cases

• 🎮 Quick skill-based arcade sessions that reward practice rather than grinding.
• ⏱️ Time-trial play — chasing world records and your own replay-verified best runs.
• ✏️ Making and sharing custom levels with Inkscape and the svg2lvl toolchain.
• 💻 Reviving old or low-spec machines with a native, dependency-light game.

Platforms

Windows, Linux, macOS and FreeBSD. Packaged in Debian/Ubuntu (xmoto), Fedora and Slackware; sources and Windows installers are published on the project site and GitHub. Debian ships 0.6.3.

Licence

Open source — GNU General Public License v2.0 (GPL-2.0). The game and its source code are released under the GNU GPL; a few third-party portions are covered by their own licences — see COPYING in the repository. Bundled artwork, levels and music may carry additional terms.

Website

xmoto.org — official site, downloads and documentation. Source and issue tracker: github.com/xmoto/xmoto.

Similar

• Rigs of Rods — another open-source game where a detailed vehicle physics simulation is the gameplay.