Road Trip Simulator
Recreate the experience of riding in a small car for hours on end. Navigate past other cars, and avoid crashing into anything. Keep gas in your tank, food in your tummy, and pull over if you get too sleepy. Explore the radio waves, and listen to 9 different radio stations on both AM and FM frequency bands
Road Trip Simulator is a point-n-click Desertbus-like travel game about endurance. With an infinitely unfolding road in front of you, you’ll need to use your limited funds wisely, and take advantage of a good rest-stop when you see one, if you want to reach your destination!
Studio: Allow Games (Solo Project)
Shipped: In Development
Platform: PC
Engine: Unity
Role: Design, Programming, Art, Voice Acting
Team Size: 1
Duration: ~6 months (Dev time)
I started working on Road Trip Simulator in the second year of the pandemic, when I was really yearning to go on a long trip somewhere new. I was inspired by watching a Lo-Fi video with a looping freeway animation, and realized I could create an infinitely repeating “treadmill” road to drive on with a stationary player. With that achievable target in mind I decided to go forward with the concept of a road trip game.
Once I had created the basic functionality for recycling road segments in a loop and moving the player car across it, I added NPC cars as obstacles. Each driver has archetypal behavior, with some being slow and defensive, while other are aggressive and become angry if slowed down.
The next big part of any road trip is the pit-stop, and I added several mechanics to incentivize pulling over. In addition to needing fuel in the car, the player would need to eat and sleep in order to keep driving effectively, or else screen effects start to cloud the player’s field of view.
Another key element was music, so I sourced as much Creative Commons music as I could to fill out multiple stations for around 30 minutes each. Between songs, I voice-acted all radio DJs as well as multiple ads for fake companies and one fake politician.
Meanwhile during the whole development process, I learned to use Substance Painter and combined it with my improving my Blender modeling skills to create the player’s car interior, the road segments, and road signage.
After around 6 months of learning and development, I released a vertical slice demo which illustrated my intended design goals. I’ve kept a spot open in my heart for Road Trip Simulator though, and I hope to be able to return to this project in the near future!
