What the Road Brings

About the game

What the Road Brings is a pseudo-3D racing game in the tradition of the early 90s arcade racers. The road is drawn as a stack of flat strips that bend and rise towards the horizon, and the cars and houses beside it are sprites that grow as you approach. It was made by Lukas Holzbeierlein (Captain4LK) for the 32-bit Spring Cleaning game jam, and this is the jam version of the game.

The race takes place on one track, Dream-Land, a road through a haunted town under a huge pink moon, with crooked houses, street lamps and wells at the roadside. You line up eighth of eight cars, start from the back of the grid and have to fight your way to the front over three laps. The other cars drive the same road, so passing them in the curves and not clipping the scenery at full speed is the whole game. When you finish, a results screen shows your lap times, your position and how many times you collided.

The art is a mix of pixel-art packs from several artists (credited at the bottom of the page) with a moody, almost Gothic palette, and the music is a long driving loop that fits the night. A short title screen, a credits page and a pause menu with Resume, Restart and Quit are all there is to manage, which keeps every new attempt a few seconds away.

Playing it here

This is the jam version of the game, compiled for the browser from the author's source code. It has one track and no options screen. The download is about 8 MB (music and graphics), and everything runs offline once loaded. It does not save anything, so there is nothing to lose when you close the page. Sound is switched on after your first click or key press on the game.

On the title screen choose Play, then press Enter on the track; a short countdown starts the race. A gamepad also works if your browser has detected one.

Controls

Tips

Ease off before the sharp bends. The road pushes you towards the outside of a curve at speed, and running into the scenery beside the track ruins a lap.

Pass on the open side. The rival cars share your road, so pick the side with space before you reach them; every collision is counted on the results screen.

Use Restart in the pause menu. A bad start decides a lot in a race of eight cars; restarting costs only a few seconds.

Credits and licence

What the Road Brings was made by Lukas Holzbeierlein (Captain4LK). The code is public domain under CC0 1.0, and the game uses the scripting library LIL (zlib licence) and, in this browser build, raylib 5.5 (zlib licence).

Graphics, all CC0: the Sideview Fantasy, Gothicvania Patreon and Gothicvania Cemetery packs by ansimuz; Generic Platformer Tiles by surt; Car Kit by Kenney; the New original Grafx2 font collection by devurandom; 2.5D Racing Resources by drummyfish. Sounds, all CC0: Sci-Fi Sounds and Impact Sounds by Kenney; Arcade Countdown by NXRT; Power Up Charge by qubodup. Music: "At the end of hope" by Emma_MA (CC0, title screen) and "RailJet / Long Seamless Loop" by Deceased Superior Technician (http://www.nosoapradio.us), licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/), cut into a seamless loop by qubodup (race music).

Changes in this version: the browser build needed a newer raylib than the 2021 one, so a few lines were adapted (a renamed function, the title screen's Quit reloads the page, and the fullscreen key is off because the page has its own button). The licence texts, the patch and the source of raylib are linked from this page.

FAQ

Is there more than one track? Not in this version. The jam version of the game has a single track, Dream-Land.

Can I play with a gamepad? Yes, if your browser exposes it: the d-pad or the left stick steers, and the face buttons accelerate and brake.

There is no sound. Click or press a key on the game once; browsers only start audio after a user action. Check the volume of the tab too.

The game does not react to the keys. Click on the game once and try again, so that the page gets the keyboard focus.