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Weekly Shorts Guidelines

Official information

This article was contributed by Ubisoft Nadeo and contains official information about Weekly Shorts as of March 10th 2025.

The Weekly Shorts game-mode was designed and introduced as a way for beginner players and casual audiences to always have 5 weekly tracks available to play that are short, simple and not very intense.

This game-mode is one that is played and tried as the first tracks to drive by many first time players, but also enjoyed by many longer time casual players and what we would like to refer to as "regular beginners" - which means players that continue to enjoy Trackmania but remain at relatively low skill level.

We quickly recognised in this mode that many expert players enjoy creative and more complex tracks. However, it has been too challenging to find readable, short and fun tracks for beginners while simultaneously offering an element of discovery and competition for competitive players.

With this, comes the unfortunate side effect that many experienced map creators try to create tracks for expert players, because reception of these tracks by the competitors is more exciting. This means tracks created slowly move away from being suitable for the audience they are intended for, and selection becomes very difficult.

For this reason, we are introducing some new rules to Weekly Shorts more in line with what we envision for this game-mode, and have some guidelines that can help your submitted tracks be selected.

We understand that this vision may not always match well with the expectation and also enjoyment of more expert players. Higher skilled players could find tracks not challenging enough, or get bored quickly if there is no unique strategy to find. For these players, we will always have the Track of the Day selections, later tracks in the Seasonal Campaigns, and of course many user generated tracks to discover in the game.

For the Weekly Short tracks, we want to see tracks that are truly short, not intense, not confusing and easy to read for beginning players. We also want to introduce some new guidelines and "rules" to submission for tracks, so we can shape and theme each week with a somewhat similar structure.

Find below the guidelines and rules we will adapt going forward. Following these guidelines as a track creator well, will greatly improve the chance for selection.

Short tracks must be short

Previously, we have communicated that tracks will be considered anywhere from 10 seconds to as long as perhaps 35 seconds. This is something we are now revisiting, as we see that tracks longer than 20 seconds can already become a little much for the players we welcome in Trackmania. We now want to put a more defined restriction on the track length, so that tracks are clearly considered short tracks.

Track length should not be longer than an Author Medal of 20 seconds.

Short tracks must be readable for a beginner

A submitted short track will only be considered if a player we welcome to Trackmania for the first time can find and follow the path well, and reach the finish without confusion or unreasonable obstacles. Signs and scenery must guide the player well, and there cannot be any confusing jumps where you cannot see clearly where to jump to. It should also be understood that many first time players are not able to look at signs and drive at the same time. Tracks must be discoverable even when not seeing them - they should be additions, clarifications. It is the path ahead, and the scenery, that should already create the route for the player to follow. Tricks should not be required to finish the track, and track creators should try as much as possible to use default Checkpoints and Finish, without hiding them or making them hard to see.

Tracks will have one of five Track Styles, and must fit one of these

Going forward, we will structure and theme each week of Weekly Shorts with a clear style for each track. These will be:

  • 1st track each week: "Wide"
  • 2nd track each week: "Slow"
  • 3rd track each week: "Puzzle"
  • 4th track each week: "Fast"
  • 5th track each week: "LOL"

This way, each week, players can know what to expect from the tracks. If you really only enjoy puzzle tracks for instance, you may immediately go and check out the newest track 3.

We will introduce new Track Style labels on the Weekly Shorts map review for these 5 labels, which you can select on your player page on Trackmania.com in your TOTD Review page.

This is not mandatory per-se, but can help highlight your track correctly to Nadeo. More importantly, we will make it mandatory for your track to be named correctly.

Tracks must include the number, for the slot you are submitting your track for.

In the case your track was made for and fits the theme for track 4 each week, which is the "Fast" Track Style, the track must be named correctly: "4 - TrackName". You will submit your track only for this selection slot by doing so.

There will be a transition period, where we will open many discussions with authors to allow them to rename their suitable tracks.

We will also prefer if the track is described by the trackname. This is not mandatory, as we do not want to dictate too much how you name your tracks, but we have to be transparent and mention that the chance for selection (and review) increases if this is the case and your track will have a simple name that describes your track.

For example, if your shorts track is a simple technical track with two drifting turns, then the Track Style is "Slow" and you could submit your track as, "2 - TwoTurns".

Similarly, if your shorts track has creative snowy hills with a few obstacles, then you could submit your track as "5 - SnowHills" for the "LOL" style.

Here is a brief explanation of these 5 Track Styles, and what we may be looking for in these themes, as well as how we believe these impact our target audience:

1. Wide

👍 Learn the controls of the car

👍 Experience gameplay

👎 Frustration of collisions

Experience gameplay with no frustration of collisions.

Tracks with a lot of space and visibility, most primarily by using Platform blocks to create more open and wide areas. These tracks are the most basic, and are very straight forward from start to finish. The player has a lot of space to drive, even if they might touch a lot of penalty surfaces. There are no sharp difficult turns or too narrow obstacles. These tracks should not be too "Fast", they are typically a little slower.

2. Slow

👍 Enrich gameplay with the brakes

👎 Stress of speed

Enrich gameplay with the brakes and without the stress of speed.

Tracks that are typically a little slower because of turns that have to be made. Could include drifting, penalty surfaces that slow the player down, dirt or grass or plastic tracks in gear 3 or below, or tracks that require releasing the acceleration.

3. Puzzle

👍 Enjoy finding cuts

👍 Big improvements with tricks

👎 Having to drive well for fun

Enjoy finding cuts without having to drive well.

Tracks that contain intended alternate strategies and routes. Multi-route tracks, pathfinding maps (that must still include a straight forward path to reach the finish), tracks with puzzle elements to discover creative ways to finish faster. If your track has intended cuts, this is the category for you.

4. Fast

👍 Enjoy the adrenaline

👎 Complexity

Enjoy the adrenaline with no complexity.

Fullspeed, Nascar, Funspeed/Speedfun tracks. Tracks with boosters, adrenaline and a lot of speed. Gear 4 and above tracks and mini speed tech tracks. If your track is faster than "Slow", then it is probably "Fast".

5. LOL

👍 Creativity & fun of luck

👍 Explore fun interactions with the car & blocks

👎 Skill to do well

Enjoy creativity & fun of luck with no specific skill to win.

Historically the most popular Track Style, but also the most created style for Weekly Shorts so far. Fun, creative, wacky tracks - tracks with fun tricks. These tracks cannot be difficult to complete, confusing or unreasonable with obstacles. They can contain some more difficult tricks as the 5th track each week, such as wet wood driving, but tracks must still be easy to complete.

Introducing labels for Weekly Shorts for feedback from Nadeo

Similarly to labels we sometimes use for Track of the Day submissions, we will now use labels to communicate quickly and concisely what problems your track may have after review by Nadeo.

After your track has been reviewed, we will attach these labels so you can choose to change or modify your track for a higher chance of selection. You can find these labels on your specific Track’s page in the Map Review section of your Trackmania.com player page.

The labels we will use, but may be subject to change in the future, are:

  • Hard AT: Your track’s Author Medal is too refined/difficult to obtain and should be easier.
  • Too Long: Your track is longer than the intended 20 seconds and unlikely to be selected.
  • Respawn Issues: Your track is not respawnable and cannot be selected.
  • Confusing Path: Your track’s readability is not very good, and unlikely to be selected.
  • Naming Issue: Your track did not follow the structure, or has an offensive track name.
  • WIP: Work In Progress, we use this to track your track, perhaps the track has no scenery.
  • Speedcheck: Your track has jumps or parts that are too hard to clear for low skill players.
  • Wrong Style: Your track does not match the Track Style it was submitted for.
  • Too Intense: A very common issue, your track starts too intense / is too intense for the target audience, and is very unlikely to be selected.

If your track is good, fun and has small solvable issues, we will try more to open discussions via the Map Review page, to ask for small changes. It is never mandatory to respond or make these changes, but selection is unlikely when the changes are not submitted.

If we labeled your track and have not opened a discussion, you will have information and could decide to change your track for better chances at selection.

In (Weekly) short

  • Tracks must fit the Track Style of either Wide, Slow, Puzzle, Fast or LOL.
  • Tracks must be prefixed correctly with a number: 1 - Mapname, 2 - Mapname etc.
  • Tracks preferably are tagged with their Track Style correctly.
  • Tracks must have a maximum Author Time of around 20.000 seconds.
  • Tracks must be readable, easy to finish, suitable for players we welcome to Trackmania.
  • Nadeo will add labels to your track after review, if there are issues that make selection unlikely.
  • Nadeo will open discussions sometimes, to see if we can work together to make an already good track more suitable for selection.

Communication & Transparency

In the near future, Nadeo will also release a FAQ/Q&A Document about Track of the Day & Weekly Shorts review. In this document, we will go more in depth on what we believe good candidates are and why.

For this purpose, we will also take questions from the Trackmania community that we will try and answer in detail, or at least as well as we can. More information on this will follow.