The Studio That Taught Phones to Fly
Jetpack Racing Hub is the official Australian portal for Aero Racer — operated by Halfbrick Studios from a converted woolstore above Eagle Street, Brisbane, where a team of thirty-one obsessives keeps the fastest sky in mobile gaming open for business.
From a Garage Prototype to 89 Million Pilots
The original Aero Racer sketch was a lunch-break prototype: a red exhaust trail, three gates, one button. Seventeen years later the same contract still holds — speed you can feel in your thumb.
The Lunch-Break Build
First playable prototype ships internally at Halfbrick — a 48-hour experiment that refuses to die.
Ten Million Pilots
The first sequel pushes online leaderboards and the community outgrows the studio's office bandwidth.
Aero Racer Reborn
Full engine rewrite on the in-house Mach core — 120fps, sub-second launches, real-time dogfights.
The Australian Portal
Jetpack Racing Hub opens in Brisbane — the official home for AU leagues, services and events.
We Removed Everything That Wasn't Speed
No energy meters. No forced ads between runs. No menus three screens deep. Aero Racer is deliberately quiet software — the noise belongs to the engine, not the interface.
One Thumb Ergonomics
Every reachable control was mapped against a 360px viewport held in one hand on a moving train. If a button sits outside the thumb arc, it doesn't ship.
Signed by Its Makers
Every circuit carries the initials of the designer who tuned it. When a level feels unfair, you know exactly whose desk to blame — and so do we.
The Ban List
Loot boxes, energy timers, pay-to-skip and interstitial ads are banned by studio charter. The document is two sentences long and has never been amended.
What the Industry Said
Honours Wall
- Best Mobile Racer — Aus Game Awards
- Excellence in Audio — Indie Showcase
- Players' Choice — Mobile Games Week
- Design Nominee — Pocket Fest '25
"The rare sequel that understands why the original worked — then removes everything else."
From the Art Director
"Winning mattered less than the nomination footage — judges kept restarting the race to feel the launch again. That's the review we wanted."
Dana Reyes — Art Direction
The Geometry Hiding Inside Every Circuit
Each track is a solved problem in discrete mathematics. Gate placement follows a Hamiltonian sweep of reachable flight corridors — which is a formal way of saying every shortcut was engineered to be findable, never given.
- 1,800+ evaluated flight corridors per circuit
- Every layout verified solvable at Mach-1 speed
Solution Space
Branching factor of the Neon Harbour flight graph, measured per gate. The spike at bar seven is the slingshot shortcut everyone misses on their first run.
Verifier Note
Every circuit ships only after the solver proves a clean line exists inside the par budget — checked on-device, every patch.
Level data filesEvery Booster Was Recorded Somewhere Real
The signature launch crack is a detuned rally car exhaust layered over a compressed air cannon, captured in a farm shed outside Toowoomba. Nothing in the mix is stock audio.
- 41 field sessions, three states, one very patient farmer
- Psychoacoustic tuning — engine pitch rises with your combo
Sample Bench
"Relaxation is a frequency. We tuned the cruise hum until the room stopped checking its watch."
Built by Pilots, Raced by Everyone
The track editor turned players into architects — over half a million community circuits and counting.
Community Picks This Month
- "Cranes Over Cairns" — coastal slalom by ReefPilot
- "Midnight Merri" — night sprint through Melbourne lanes
- "Uluru Halo" — desert endurance run, zero checkpoints
Every published circuit exports as shareable level code — paste a friend's code and race their ghost in under ten seconds.
Import a Circuit
Got a code from a squadmate? The editor validates it, renders a preview and queues your first run — no menus in between.
See the formatThe Perfect-Score Club
Three stars on every official circuit — 1,200 checkpoints, zero dropped frames, zero excuses. Membership is engraved permanently and cannot be bought, gifted or appealed.
Engraved Names
- VAPOURTRAIL — certified March 2024
- Woomera.Wolf — certified July 2024
- TropicStatic — certified January 2025
Verification requires a full replay audit by two senior reviewers.
Which Pilot Archetype Are You?
Three questions, answered honestly, tell you more about your flying than a thousand laps.
The Three Questions
- Leaderboard resets tomorrow — grind now or sleep?
- A gate closes ahead: thread it or route around?
- Perfect run or fastest run — which one was better?
The Four Archetypes
- Strategist — maps the track before the throttle
- Sprinter — trusts reflexes over rehearsal
- Glider — flies for the flow, keeps the trophies anyway
- Perfector — restarts until the line is clean
Starter Pack by Type
New accounts get a recommended checkpoint path tuned to their archetype — Strategists get technical circuits first, Sprinters get the fast ones.
Get coached on your typeFast Game, Calm Hands
A surprising body of playtest data says high-speed flow states lower perceived stress — rhythmic decisions plus instant feedback, minus consequence.
"Flow doesn't need stillness. It needs a clean loop of intent and response — racing games provide exactly that."
Mindful Minutes
Zen Cruise sessions can optionally log mindful minutes to Apple Health or Google Fit — the game counts your calm like it counts your laps.
- Opt-in, on-device, never uploaded
- No reminders past 21:00 local
Kids & Education Mode
A supervised mode with simplified circuits, oversized gates and a curriculum hidden inside the speed — spatial reasoning, planning and fine motor control, dressed up as racing.
- Kids Safe certified — no chat, no purchases, no ads
- Developed with early-learning educators in Queensland
Safety Spec
- Zero external links inside kids mode
- Parent dashboard with session limits
- No behavioural advertising — ever
- Offline play fully supported