Ahead of the Curve

Submission for GMTK 2020.

A racing game where you play as a corrupt rally co-driver. Your goal is to sabotage your own driver by giving them false instructions and crashing their car before they can finish the race.

But beware! Your driver must first trust you before you can drive them off a cliff. Pay close attention to your pace notes and the track and make sure that you accomplish your mission before the race ends.

Good luck and keep both eyes on the road! And one on the map.

Comprehensive How-to-Play:

At the beginning, your driver is neutral towards you. You can gain the driver's trust by correctly guessing the next curve, i.e. loose their trust by not guessing the next curve. There are two ways to crash the car: either gain the driver's trust and then issue a wrong command or loose their trust and issue a good command. You must listen to the driver's feedback to know their attitude towards you. The driver will praise you if they trust you, i.e. criticize you if they don't trust you.

You must keep track of where you are in the race. Your pace notes hold the information about the entire track. You can bring your pace notes up and down by pressing SPACE. You cannot issue commands to the driver while your pace notes are up.

There are 5 types of curves in the race: a straight, L2/R2 (slight curves) and L3/R3 (severe curves). You must guess the upcoming curve, not the curve you're currently on! You issue commands to the driver using the following keys:

• Straight - W/Up arrow
• L2 - A/Left arrow
• L3 - A/Left arrow + Shift
• R2 - D/Right arrow
• R3 - D/Right arrow + Shift

There is an additional number associated with each curve in your pace notes: 100, 200 and 300. This number indicates the length of the curve. Use this to plan out when to look at your pace notes.

Good luck!

Sound Assets:

• Car engine
• Car horn
• Semaphore beep
• Tire squeal 1
• Tire squeal 2
• Wooden fence
• Pace notes