Racing Prototype 3


If you publish Flash games in some capacity and would like to fund further development based on this prototype, don't hesistate to contact me at nathan_AT_icecreambreakfast.com.


LEFT/RIGHT: Steer
UP: Accelerate
DOWN: Slow down
SPACE: Use speed boost (if you get one)
ESCAPE: Pause / Settings
'f': fullscreen, 'escape': leave fullscreen.
'm': mute/unmute sound (not in fullscreen)

GOAL: Drive around the track and complete two laps. Do it before your timer runs out. If you cross checkpoints, you'll have some time added to your clock.


Please wait for this to load - there's no progress bar. Click the flash app a few times to give it input focus.
There's no way to restart, so press F5 to refresh the page to play again.

How to Play Well


   Avoid walls, and cut corners close. The racing model isn't robust, so there's not much depth to explore. Be strategic about speed boosters and speed arrows - they reset inertia. Take advantage of that. They also let you zip over spikes, which allows for shortcuts.

Design Notes


Alternate Genre Bundles


   It is a tragedy of game genre evolution that inadvertant calcification often takes place. Ideas grow bound together without strictly needing to be so. For example, ever since Halo introduced recharging shields, developers of first and third person action games have built their experiences around that feature. It's a fine feature. But it's just one, of many possible, conflicting features. This pattern is easier to see in hindsight. Wolfenstein 3D still had lives like an arcade game, despite introducing save-anywhere and making lives redudant. A spate of platformers followed Super Mario Brothers that included "jump on heads to attack", despite it being, as an action, heavily stylized and not a default action for a genre. Random encounters have bedeviled JRPGs for decades despite being contestably a genre flaw. Portal was considered wildly innovative because its team had the audacity to make a game in first person perspective and not include a bullet-shooting gun.
   Racing games are particularly beset by this problem. "Navigate this path more quickly than competitors" is a fruitful goal framework to put gameplay in. Start with that base goal, and all sorts of game play styles could emerge.
   And yet racing games often seem only slightly more varied than John Madden football, in terms of genre adadherence. They're often great games, mind you. But they hew to their origin.
   My racing game loves have been F-Zero, Super Mario Kart, Wipeout XL, and the PS1 Micro Machines game. F-Zero and the original Super Mario Kart both pushed away from the default confines of racing games and foregrounded specific, game-y systems to make their game styles particular. Both founded sub-genres in the process. If this prototype went further, that would be the goal as well. Imagine taking just one special action above and beyond steering and accelerating, like F-Zero X does with itsspin attacking and "boost drains health" trade off, or like Mario Kart does with its coins-for-speed system and powerups, and building an entire game world around that action. That would be my goal. It's not present in this prototype.

Rendering Technology


The technology used here is described here.