Slow Roads

Slow Roads is a casual driving game designed to capture the zen of a long drive on a scenic road. Zone out as you coast along lifelike roads that wind endlessly through procedurally-generated landscapes, with configurable locations, road styles, seasons, weather, and vehicles. Generate a unique world, throw on some music, and just drive.

Endless driving zen

Simply chase the horizon through endless, ever-unique landscapes, with no objectives, challenges, or distractions. Disconnect from stress while you roll through valleys, fields, forests, and coastlines at your own pace. Minimalism is the focus; this a therapeutic escape, designed for a particular kind of person.

Infinitely-generated scenic roads

A novel procedural engine generates the landscapes and roads organically, meaning every stretch of road is unique and non-repeating. Choose your preferred style, from casual to winding corners, wide or narrow, and paved or off-road. World generation is seeded, allowing you to revisit any especially nice road you find.

Settings for location, season, weather, and time-of-day

Select a location and instantly switch between scene styles to suit your mood, with options for sun, cloud, snow, and time-of-day. Locations are based on real places - roll through the hills of the Peak District, coast along the California shore, or rove Off-World if you really need an escape.

Choose the vehicle that suits your style

"Driving zen" means different things to different people, whether that's cruising in the coupe, rallying in the hatch, or kissing each apex with the sports car. Maybe take the coach for a slow tour, or try hitting the perfect lean into every corner with the bike.

Vehicle customisation and tuning

Optionally customise your vehicle's style and tuning, with controls over colours, wheels, plates, engines, handling, and more. Any vehicle's engine can be electric or combustion, with the latter having options for manual or automatic transmission.

Casual or sim-style driving

Configure the gameplay to your own comforts with controls for steer assist, camera pose, traffic, and more. You can even let the car drive for you, with options for automatic steering, automatic speed control, or full autodrive. The cockpit view can be configured for sim-style driving, with support for controllers and wheels*

*Please note that force feedback is not currently supported by the engine, but is planned for a near-term content update. Check out the demo to verify your device's compatibility.

Just drive...

Slow Roads is designed for minimalist gameplay, with a lightweight engine that is hyper-optimised for endless, real-time environment generation - less so for crash physics or stunts. Take it slow, stay on the road, and let the simplicity of a mindless drive scratch an itch you didn't know you had. Having said that, nobody will stop you if you prefer to cruise at 300kph or rally on the mountain trails...

Steam-exclusive features

If you've played the web version, you may wonder what's going to be different on Steam. In the full game you'll find dozens of exclusive upgrades and features, including:

• Extra locations, starting with the new California coast

• New road styles, including off-road trails

• New vehicles, starting with the Hatch and Sports car

• Vehicle customisation, both for style and physics tuning

• Options for combustion engines and manual transmissions for all vehicles

• Configurable traffic modes - set density, speed, and which lane(s) they drive in

• A music interface for playing from local files or public radio stations

• Improved scenery detail and high-definition assets

• Improved controller support

• Profiles for saving your progress and settings

• Expanded settings for gameplay and graphics

• Milestone achievements

Lastly, buying on Steam enables the web version to remain free and ad-free for everybody, while supporting ongoing development. Since initial release in 2022, the web version has never featured ads, microtransactions, or paywalls. It will remain this way and will continue to receive small updates into the future, though will represent a more minimal experience of the game.

Not sure if it's for you? Try the demo!

This kind of minimal gameplay isn't for everyone - check out the demo or try the web version first to see if it hits the spot. The demo is also the best way to compare differences between the Steam and web versions, and to check device compatibility. Some features are locked or limited in the demo, but all are instantly available in the full game.

Post-launch roadmap

Slow Roads is a living project, with active development of extra locations, features, and vehicles continuing beyond initial release. The list is long, but the main goals for upcoming updates include:

• Force feedback support for wheel controllers

• Rain, dynamic weather effects, and a day/night cycle

• New locations set elsewhere in the world (see WIP of an Alps location above)

• Enhanced environmental details like structures and wildlife

• A world editor allowing you to alter parameters and generate custom locations

These are intended to be free updates to the core game; there are currently no plans to gate future features behind DLCs, though as the core game grows the base price may rise in alignment.

Human-made over 5 years

No AI has been used to generate any code or content in or about the game, and never will be. Slow Roads has been a labour of love since it began as a hobby project in 2021, and has been built with a decade of experience in 3D graphics and creative software development. Textures are hand-drawn, sounds are recorded locally, and all systems are designed and engineered specifically for the unique context of the game. The graphics are simple, but deliberate; most effort is spent on the invisible elements of the custom engine. This is a solo-developed project that I take great care over; it's an art piece more than a commercial venture. In general I think that using AI to shortcut creativity is a great loss for everyone besides those selling the tools to do it.

Please note that procedural generation is not a form of generative AI; the procedures used to generate the world in the game are mathematical functions that have been derived and defined by hand, with direct creative intent.