Zen Garden
Zen Garden is an official STK track, created by Jean-Manuel Clémencon (samuncle).
History
Zen Garden replaced Secret Garden as an official track since version 0.7.3. Both tracks have the same minimap, but the themes are different. Secret Garden is still available as addon.
After becoming an official track, Zen Garden switched its time of day from sunny day to night (as well as other tracks like Northern Resort).
Description
Zen Garden is most suitable for lightweight karts. A normal lap is rather short and takes about 23 seconds, so the default lap number is 4.
Immediately after the start, the track, a brown trail, turns sharply to the left. A small nitro is located behind the banana and should be taken for a good lap start.
The track then keeps turning quite a lot (right, left, right) without long straights; in this part it is easy for a new player to be confused as there are many items and bananas alternating. Swappers can be effective there. The last right turn can be skipped with riding on the grass, this saves some time so most online players cut it.
After that the track turns left onto a wooden bridge over a river. The bridge makes a 180° curve before leading into a cave. In the cave, the track does a long right curve that goes up, and eventually the player becomes above the start of the turn. A bug with rank calculation can happen there (so, for example, the leader may be displayed in another position for a second).
The track ends with a long left turn after the cave, with two powerups and a banana.
The landscape mostly consists of trees and one Japanese-like tower. Online races at Zen Garden are considered to be quite chaotic as there are a lot of powerups, especially in the first half of the lap, and bananas. Also the track is narrow which makes the probability of mistake bigger. Still it is rather unpopular for online gaming despite having less lags.
