Atmospheric is what I want for breakfast.
The sheer number of independent arcade racers willing to cater to my boyhood might be plenty, but that very many can set the sun, shift space-time continuum or make me want to revisit The Endless River like Max Gittel does I doubt.
Driving on the lonely tube highway at the speed of light, heading towards the end of the universe.
Gameplay of Photon Highway, an arcade racer, with a procedurally generated road. #gamedev #indiedev #unity3d
Soundtrack by the talented @JamalGreenMusic pic.twitter.com/YggcJjaFTS— Max Luxon (@MaxLuxon) November 21, 2017
Photon Highway is a physics-bender, originally a 4-week Unity lesson that evolved into a 4-month experiment as per Gittel’s own admission. It’s free-to-play on itch.io, wants me to break the light-barrier at times, slow down at others and nearly miss obstacles in between.
Through all this I’m allowed to warp the road ahead with my keyboard, stacking points on a solitary scoreboard as I drive towards the next of what is 10 different locales in my choice of vehicle. I’ve been terrible at it so far but then I couldn’t care less about quitting.
Jamal Green and his two-track number keeps me coming back for more.
What Photon Highway also seems to be is one big digression from Hexoplanet; Gittel’s next that he’s been silently tweeting about with equally enamoring art for well over a year now.
I could simply leave you with his Cartrdge but amid the standard tilt-shifts I’ve found that it’s simulation/strategy with a mix of city-building, path-finding and tower defense.
The aesthetics are beautifully sunlit against themes of procedurally generated star-gazing observatories, environmental pollution, drone deliveries, foliage and effects of weather. Plus OBE looks great against white, doesn’t he?
Hexoplanet: Day & Night Cycle + better lighting + some buildings are animated now #gamedev #indiedev pic.twitter.com/4hmSJz5EAR
— Max Luxon (@MaxLuxon) September 24, 2017
Something of an oil-painter himself, Gittel had originally hinted at more information sometime around the end of last year but for now it seems like an official developer-log could still be a while.
If the microscopic water planet and its natural satellite fails to hold your interest despite all of the above though, the rest of his prior mobile creations look to be worth a visit.
