A tiny cruise*

* through an infinite space

A Tiny Cruise* started as a personal challenge to create a fun, arcade-style car controller from scratch. But once I had finished the controller, I realised how satisfying it was to drive, drift and boost around the map - so I decided to build a full game around it.

To expand the experience, I worked on procedural road generation to create varied routes. For visuals, I modeled a retro ’80s environment and made custom shaders and effects to match the aesthetic. I also added music and designed sound effects.

While at this point it was already fun to endlessly drive around, due to the car simply being satisfying to control, I still wanted to add an extra motivator to draw players in. I did this by adding checkpoints along the way that give the player score, allowing them to go for high scores. The checkpoints give more score the faster a player reaches them, which also motivates them to drive faster. Driving faster requires users to use the drifting and boosting mechanics, which, in turn, are satisfying to use, thus pushing them towards a more engaging playstyle. That said, for players that do not wish to engage in this, the checkpoints give points no matter what, so even slowly cruising players get the reward of going for high scores if they simply chain together a lot of checkpoints.

The end result is a fun, yet relaxing game where you can cruise around aimlessly, being intrinsically motivated by the inherent satisfaction of driving as well as the extrinsic reward of checkpoints/highscore.

This was a very fun and rewarding project, and I learned a lot about developing core driving systems, procedural generation, and creating retro visuals (I had a lot of fun with shaders) from the ground up. I enjoyed working on it, and I hope you enjoy playing the little demo.

You can find the game here: https://samuwhale.itch.io/atinycruise