A small low-poly city, a car on a spline, and the gentle satisfaction of driving nowhere in particular.
There's a particular pleasure in low-poly aesthetics. Soft pastel colours, flat-shaded geometry, just enough detail to suggest a world without overwhelming it. By 2025, this style had become a small visual language of its own — the look you see in indie city-builders and contemplative driving games.
Pastel Morning Drive was an experiment in that language. A low-poly city, a small car, a curved path through the streets, and a basic physics model that lets you drive forward and backward along it. No goal. No score. No collisions to worry about. Just the gentle motion of a small car through a small world in the early morning light.
What it is
A short interactive driving experience. Use W and S to accelerate and brake; the car moves along a predefined spline through the city. The aesthetic is the entire point — soft pastel colours, low-poly geometry, soft directional sunlight, the early-morning blue-pink hour.
What stayed with me
The realisation that constraint can be a feature. The car can't leave the road. There's no steering input — only forward and backward. That sounds limiting, but it removes the entire genre of failure (crashing, getting lost, dying) and leaves only the meditative motion. Some of the best contemplative games work this way.
It's also where I started thinking about what a piece of digital architecture can be, beyond a tool or a game. This is neither. It's a small space you spend a moment in. That category — places more than tools — eventually led to Townscape.
Still live at here if you want to take a drive.
Part of the early experiments — the precursor to Townscape and the visual language of small charming digital places.