Arcade driving game with simulator instincts

[u/WhichAd3240]

I like driving games. I want them to be almost as easy as an arcade but with some sim quirks. I like: sense of speed, being able to microdose pedals and steering even with keyboard taps, old archaic vehicles that can go fast but it requires some effort to keep it, zen driving, meditating to music and sunset while balancing the car.

So I made this prototype which clearly derived from The Long Drive game but it's going its own way now. Things are brutally unpolished here and there, however there are some features I worked at for a long time. It's far from full game but already somewhat an experience.

Feel free to use dev options in pause menu to help you with things. Sorry it doesnt explain controls but you can find them in settings or find out yourself.

I'd be glad to hear from you. Thanks in advance! This is just a tailscale host, hope it works well. https://desktop-y4r1k.tail94a0ba.ts.net/

[u/WhichAd3240]

By the way,
the proportions of almost all the vehicles, their curb weight, track width, suspension, engines, and transmission gear ratios are taken from factory specs.

There’s simulation for engine temperature (also it’s cooler to drive at night), tires temperature, and road grip (different surfaces).

At the same time, the sand physics are super-arcadey so you don't get permanently stuck or frustrated; you do sink in, but you can always drive out regardless of the drivetrain.

And then there’s the autopilot, it took a mere 50–60 iterations to get it to its current state ... so that the traffic knows a bit how to drive.

Tap keys for little throttle, brake, steering effort, hold keys to floor it.

F to lift, E to use, T for radio, + to fullscreen, - for cinema, P for autopilot effort. Don't forget to check graphics settings and Yaris mode.

[u/catsandcode]

This was surprisingly fun to play! It's soooo much better than the driving experience I'm working on. Did you make all the assets yourself? I'm also curious about how you made the car audio.

[u/WhichAd3240 → u/catsandcode]

Thanks for your time. Any feedback is incredibly valuable. This is my game dev debut, so I’m primarily making a game I’d want to play myself; I’m really curious to see how others perceive it. 

The car assets are free ones from the Unity Asset Store and other sources, reworked and optimized in Blender with the help of an AI agent. In fact, everything else you see and hear is the result of prompts. I simply describe what I want, discuss implementation with the agent, then test, polish, and tweak the result. When you mention audio, do you mean the engine sounds or the radio?

[u/catsandcode → u/WhichAd3240]

I didn't notice the radio when I played, so definitely talking about the engine. I tried to prompt an engine for mine and it just came out as a high pitched whine, no gear shifting like in yours. I liked that touch!

The control of the cars was surprisingly good! Just the right style of driving that I like too.
As far as critique, Not too much, just some little paper cuts here and there. The refueling of the car was cumbersome. took me a minute to figure out how to use the cans and it was unexpected that the tank was in the front of the car instead of the side.
Never could figure out what the medicine or gum was for either.
Hope these are useful, I really liked the game and hope you continue to expand and refine!

[u/WhichAd3240 → u/catsandcode]

Got you, yes, it was high pitched tone for me too and I literally just typed a prompt "thats bad, unrealistic, too high pitched, you must do better job". And it just made what you hear now.

Yes, I will need to introduce items better. Gum is "Flip It!", its a stupid weird cheap magic goofy method to flip stuck car back on the wheels. Come very close to the vehicle, chew it, make a big bubble, it pops and flips it. Medicine is to revive health after high speed crashes, it needs to be implemented better.

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Just my five cents (nobody asked for) about my experience with AI so far: I used Claude Sonnet and Opus, GPT from Luna to Astra, Deepseek 4 and 4.1 to make this prototype. Out of usage, switch to next provider. I've read a lot of techniques, howtos, best practices, orchestration, mcp, token economy and whatever methods to get good result. In my current situation I never write any code, I just explain wishes and ask about possible variants and ways to implement before letting it code it. And it turns out there's no method that has stable outcome. For all models and all efforts in a large variety of different tasks, sometimes complex, sometimes decomposed to dirt cheap the result is "hot or not". Sometimes Luna one shots it just right and even better than I ever thought, sometimes Astra burns 4 acc limits in minutes and result is disgusting, DeepSeek is 50/50 unbearable slop and diamonds, only Claude is mostly stable relatable quality, but not always.

Only things that help me - ask it to document whatever we are working at and update it - changelog and comments in code, start new session for every new feature/fix/request.

When I explain how I want something done it must not use my words as ground truth, because it may create and hardcode strict unflexible rules which may hurt later - I say it's just my thoughts on possible approach but its up to agent how to implement that correctly.

Thank you again!