Roadtrip Mixtape

A game prototype made for the Road Trip Game Jam

How to play:

You are traveling across the country on a road trip. As with all road trips, it is essential that you have a good playlist for long, boring drives. It is your task to create this mixtape.

Pick a destination:

You start on the west coast. Possible routes are indicated with thick red lines. Clicking on a destination will select it, and give you a preview of the rewards.

Make a playlist

The inventory on the left represents your song library. Drag songs from the inventory into the playlist at the bottom of the screen to make your mixtape. 

What makes a good playlist?

Genre:

The song genre is represented by the colour of the song. A good playlist is either themed (all one colour), or has a wide variety of genres.

Length:

A good playlist includes long, short, and medium length songs. A playlist where every song is the same length is boring!

Flow:

You want good transitions from song to song. A "smooth" playlist is better than one with sudden changes.

Duration:

The playlist must be long enough to last the entire trip. This is indicated by the black bar on the playlist.

Here is a good playlist, with a variety of lengths, genres, and a nice smooth flow.

Here is a bad playlist. It's boring and has jarring transitions between songs:

Every playlist has a rating, from 0 to 5 stars:

Continuing your journey:

When you're happy with the playlist, click the Confirm button. You will get new songs and new destinations.

Winning and Losing:

 Your goal is to reach the city on the east coast.

A road trip is tiring, and you will lose energy (mood bar on the right) as you travel. A 5-star playlist will lose no mood, but a low-rated playlist will lose a lot. If your mood drops to zero, then the roadtrip has ended!

It is possible to gain mood! If your playlist includes shiny songs, then your mood will go up. These are essential to reaching your destination.

Good luck on your roadtrip!

About the game:

This is my most ambitious project, and I only completed the bare minimum to make a playable prototype. I had dreams of a hollow-earth setting (this is why the map is inverted), random events, and collectible items that will modify your scoring. 

Of course, a game about a mixtape should have music!

I may return to this project in the future. For now, I'm happy with the working prototype.

The map is generated procedurally using a Poisson Disc distribution and a Delaunay Triangulation. City names are taken randomly from a list of US counties.

This project was written in Godot.

Cassette tape photo by Thegreenj - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, Link