By Highway Noir takes place a short time into the future in an unnamed city full of crime and corporate corruption. Your character is the best driver in the Major Crimes Agency until you’re thrown to the wolves for an operation gone wrong. You take your skills to the black market while you plan your revenge. All you see of the city is imposing buildings and an indifferent population as your David takes on the Goliath of the conspiracy you uncover. Against this monolith you have only a couple of allies and you’re not even totally sure you can trust them. You just have to hope that everything will be decided on the road where your skills lie.
What was the inspiration behind the game?
My starting point for the design was wanting to capture the feeling of being in an action movie car chase. That means allowing the player to feel unstoppable as they weave through traffic and throwing in set pieces to keep things fresh. It’s a concept I initially played with in my first game, Vectic: Boosted. However, as a tactical turn based racing game (with lasers!) it lent itself more to tight bends and speed management. With a real time game I was finally able to go after that adrenaline rush properly.
What were the biggest challenges you faced and what were the greatest triumphs?
Like most indies I’ve had my run ins with self doubt! Sometimes it takes a little time out to remember what you want to make and reflect on what you’ve made already. The will soon comes back. I’m also lucky to have had encouragement from all sorts of wonderful people. Every time I’ve made a feature work as I want it to I’ve felt a little rush of victory. On a good day it’s even better than succeeding at playing a really strong game. The biggest moments are the unexpected ones – I’ll be testing a really minor change and it will hit me that everything on the screen is something I made and that I’m actually having fun. I know I’m doing well when I can play test a feature and keep playing before I remember that I’m supposed to go back to my codebase.
What makes the game different from others in the genre?
What I don’t see often in street level driving games is a focus on sustained speed. Highway Noir keeps you at top speed on open roads without levels based on navigating alleyways or making sharp turns. There are a number of excellent driving focused games, often open world, that have you making stops or otherwise slowing down. Those missions are fun, but my favourites are always the ones in which you can really let loose on the accelerator. I wanted to take those moments of flow and make those the core of the experience.
How does the customization in the game work?
Every day you will return to your garage hideout. From there you can spend your earnings on new cars, all of which can be painted in a variety of patterns and colours. For example, you might decide that your basic hatchback would suit a simple blue but your best sports car demands a coat of black with yellow go-faster stripes. You can also take out your unlocked cars in Instaplay which allows you to customise the game itself. It offers parameters such as a variety of modes and objectives, different weather and traffic conditions and a set of options for law enforcement presence. You can curate any experience from an unlimited drive at your own pace to an endurance race pursued by a swarm of police cars and a helicopter.
How tricky was it to blend the genres without one dominating another?
Thematically speaking I found that the neo noir element helped with the driving. Having decided on ‘elite driver’ gameplay I needed a context and noir gave me the thriller narrative and stark visual style to bring it together. I also used this to lean into a stylised version of the road – I often point out that I don’t want anyone to actually drive this way, and the spartan surroundings and limited colour separate the stunts from reality. The hardest line to walk was the arcade driving mechanics with the grittier themes. The simple controls reflect your character’s sheer skill but I stopped short of concepts like power ups and added cinematic takedowns to maintain some weight to the action. All of the contracts come with flavour text and the story missions have dialogue. Instaplay is much less contextual, but I never wanted the story to stray too far from noir.
What is your stance on A.I. in gaming?
Without giving any specific spoilers you’ve touched on a theme in the story. Everything in the game is either my own work, the work of someone I commissioned for the job or an asset from a vetted source. No generative AI was used and I have no plans to use it in any of my work in the future. That’s partly on principle and partly because it’s just so much more fun to actively create than to prompt something into existence!
What do you have upcoming?
First of all, some R&R! It won’t be long before I’m back to development and there have been ideas begging to be started for a while, as well as a hard drive full of unfinished work. I’d like to take on a project with more considered gameplay than the high speed, physical action in Highway Noir. My library is full of both frantic and more sedate games and I make games that I want to play so I end up called to various styles and genres. I’m torn between between a turn based combat game and a short horror concept in which your character is stuck in an elevator. Knowing me I’ll try to do both!
