Wild Ride

There is very few things Non-Player-Characters (NPC as us pro gamers call them) have to fear: They don’t have to pay taxes, they don’t have to hold smalltalk (except when they do) and they don’t have to worry about Ludum Dare deadlines. But there is one thing, one singular thing that all NPCs fear more than we possibly can imagine, that makes them say “No, please” instead of “I am error”: Being on the wrong end of a malevolent omnipotent being in a simulation game. Dan Stuckmann suffered such a fate: A nice day at the amusement park turned into a life-altering event as he found himself stuck on the “Wild Ride” for over 50 years (in case you can’t imagine the horror, that’s 50 years of amusement park food). But he has not given up hope yet and has come up with a crazy plan to escape the “Wild Ride” even if he himself won’t be around to see it anymore.

So yeah, this game is based on a popular… I’m not sure what you’d call it, a story? It’s based on the popular story of Mr. Bones’ Wild Ride, in which a Rollercoaster Tycoon player describes in great detail how they tormented their little men inside the game by forcing them into an eternal loop of riding the coaster (here’s an imgur link if you’ve never seen it before, it’s pretty funny). Originally I wanted to make it more about survival on top of the coaster, but that was pretty boring, so after the first day, I threw everything out and made it a physics game instead. Hope the physics aren’t too wonky, I tried to prefer “feeling good” over realism but it’s still a struggle. But that’s what the Ludum Dare is for, right? Trying stuff.

Either way, thanks a lot for playing!

Controls for Windows/HTML5:

• Return to game title-> Exit game - Escape
• Hack at coaster / Advance text - A
• Speed up - Hold left when on rails
• Speed down - Hold right when on rails
• Leave Title Screen - Enter
• Reset to checkpoint - R
• Full screen: CTRL Enter for Windows / F8 for Web (make sure to click game in firefox first or fullscreen will fail)

Controls for Dreamcast (and controller):

• Return to game title -> menu -> collection title -> Exit game - A B X Y START (Standard Dreamcast return to title combo)
• Hack at coaster / Advance text - A
• Speed up - Hold left when on rails
• Speed down - Hold right when on rails
• Leave Title Screen - Start
• Reset to checkpoint - R trigger

Additional notes:

• Original release date: 10/05/2020
• Source code is on github: http://github.com/CaptainDreamcast/WildRide/

Thanks for playing!