Ars Technica
A few days ago, an Edinburgh, Scotland-based developer named Anslo announced slow roads, a free, easy racing game with procedurally generated scenic landscapes running in a web browser. It is available on slowroads.io and requires no logins or installations to play.
Many car driving video games have you stuck to rules that can make driving stressful, which is great if you’re in a competitive mood. But sometimes you might just want to relax and enjoy the ride. That’s true slow roads comes in. In the game you cannot crash, fail or lose. The road stretches forever as scenic landscapes race past. If you stray from the road, press “R” to reset your car’s position on the pavement. Even roads are optional: drive off-road or underwater if you want.
The game runs on Chrome, Firefox, Safari and Edge browsers.
Into the drive controls slow roads are simple. Use the standard WASD keys or the arrow keys on your keyboard to control your vehicle. “W” (or up arrow) is accelerating, “S” (or down arrow) is braking. “A” and “D” (or left and right arrows) provide the controls. You can boost your car by holding down Shift or double tapping “W”. In addition, “C” changes the camera angle and “Q” and “E” cycle through the available weather and lighting conditions. And if keyboard control isn’t your thing, you can switch to mouse-driven control instead.
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slow roads lets you change the weather and lighting. Here we see a snowy landscape at dusk.
Ars Technica
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slow roads supports an optional first-person view, among other things.
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When driving at night, you can turn your headlights on or off.
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Going off-road in a snowy landscape in slow roads.
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slow roads’ keyboard controls are accessible in a handy pop-up guide.
Ars Technica
Anslo built slow roads using a 3D JavaScript library called three.js, and the developer goes into detail about the game’s technical back-end in a Medium post, including how to generate the infinite map on-the-fly and how to handle physics. It’s a pretty advanced technical demo that’s fun too.
At first play it is clear that graphics are not the point of slow roads, and that works to his advantage. It features minimalist graphics and sound effects, partly because the game can be taxing on some machines. “The engine pushes the boundaries of what is reasonable for a browser game,” Anslo writes in a slow roads FAQ. “Although there are constant optimizations being added.”
if slow roads is slow for you and you have a good GPU in your machine, make sure GPU hardware acceleration is enabled in your browser. For example, in Chrome, click the button with the ellipses (three dots) and open Settings. Then click the “System” menu in the sidebar and toggle the switch next to “Use hardware acceleration when available” to the “on” position.
Anslo essentially considers the game complete, but is asking for donations that can fund feature additions such as improved weather effects (like rain), more vehicle types, and controller support. There are currently no plans for an open source release, but it is not ruled out. In the meantime, Anslo is committed to keeping slow roads “freely available and ad-free,” according to the game’s About page. “Enjoy this as a respite from runaway capitalism.”
