Far Away Drive

title screen
gas station
steaming coffee
gas station products
behind water cooler
bathroom at the gas station

Inspiration

This small game was inspired by works of Franz Kafka, games like I Have No Mouth but I Must Scream, Norco and Kentucky Route Zero, and movies like Machinist are among the inspirations for this project.

What it does

It's a short (is it really?) adventure at some rural gas station, which is actually not what it seems.

How I built it

Starting with a detailed tech document created from scratch and then upgraded with the help of Chat GPS. Idea was to create point and click adventure with based on layers and trees of text interaction, using three.js library and depending on result go with 3d objects or pre-rendered images. As I was fine with 3d scenes I then started refining them. Little by little, working in bolt create and chat modes I build an initial prototype. Then added some thematic music generated in Suno. Time wise it tooked me about one full weekend. Idea was brewing the head before, but concept document and all the work was done in few days. Working with animation seems pretty smooth and interesting thing to do, bolt really helped me with visual glitches and effects.

Challenges I ran into

I tried starting the project few times, using different PRD with different level of details etc. The one that made to the challenge seems best of all. It still have a lot of quirks and glitches that weren't planned, but it's as close to a simple concept as possible.

As project started to grow, adding/changing small aspects of the game became much harder. If I can easily update text string in the code it becomes more and more hard when I need to move the object somewhere else (I guess I need to learn how to work with three.js more closely).

At one point, I came up with the idea of a debug / free camera, a temporary mode that allowed me to free roam the scenes, get coordinates and feed them into bolt to correct camera settings. Not without problems, but it helped set things straight.

At one point, I had to restart chat, as even small updates were taking too long and way too much tokens, so I duplicated projects inside the bolt and continued chat from scratch — this method helped me a lot with the final touches.

Unfortunately, it was very hard and time-consuming to control few plot elements, so there is still possibility to half-stuck in the game. But to completly solve this problem I left one of dev mode features — scene view switch which alows players in complex situation switch placement of camera and re-access dialogs or comments and finish the scene.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Creating pretty neat levels close to what I was imagining in the start. Adding music (created in Suno) and effects (created by bolt) to spice up the atmosphere. I'm happy with few things that I didn't plan and bolt put them, like additional (pretty crazy) dialogues and some random objects.

What I learned

AI can help you really fast with initial POC/demo of your concept, but going full scale and into details is might still be a little bit hard. Same goes with control, while you can easily control small things like HUD/UI, working with 3D objects can become a nightmare if you're new to it. AI can also really help with scenario and plot twists, this is very good way to tweak plot if you lack ideas.

What's next for Far Away Drive

Dremesque and Kafquesque store in Far Away Drive is just a small part of the planned game, so in future I would like to try to build it as a full-scale project. Work with bolt let me think that it's possible.