Cab Ride
Drive a train, forever, through a dreamlike land.
Transport passengers to their destination.
Watch the world go by.
Listen to chilled out chiptune music.
In Cab Ride you can drive thousands of different train routes through rolling hills, winding tunnels and weaving between the tall buildings of vast cities. You can drive the train for as long as you like. When you're ready to end your journey, hold down the left arrow key to announce the last station. Stopping at stations along the way means you can pick up and drop off passengers. Try and stop at the marker at each station for a high rating. Or don't! It's up to you.
Cab Ride is a casual train simulation, not aiming for real world accuracy, but like a real train, it takes a while to brake. If you're overshooting stations, watch for the alert for the next station and reduce the throttle so you're ready to stop.
You can get the PICO-8 cart on the PICO-8 BBS (also play in your browser there if you prefer)
Controls
- X (PICO-8 'X' button
) - horn/start/restart the game - C / Z (PICO-8 'O' button
)- open/close doors at station (must have stopped just in front of signal) - Up - increase braking/decrease throttle
- Down - accelerate/increase throttle
- Left - hold down to announce the last station (will end the current journey)
- Right - turn Express mode on/off aka Screensaver Mode
Credits
Programming - Ben Jones / @Powersaurus
Music - Stephen 'rych-t' Jones / Twitter / Instagram / Soundcloud
Based on code from tutorials by Tom Mulgrew https://www.lexaloffle.com/bbs/?tid=35767 licensed under Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/
Source code and cart available on PICO-8 BBS
Soundtrack available on YouTube
License
All source and assets are licensed under Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/
Download
Development log
- Cab Ride v1.0.3Feb 28, 2021
- Cab Ride v1.0.2Feb 08, 2021
- Cab Ride v1.0.1Feb 02, 2021
- Cab Ride is released!Jan 30, 2021
Comments
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A work I love and love to love!
I played it in February 2021 and have been playing it every few months since then because I can't forget it.
The trains are drawn in 3D pixel art, and the tracks, stations, and scenery that changes morning, noon, and night are just so beautiful and lovely.
I love it super much, meow~!
Thanks for the video! I shared it here - https://mastodon.social/@Powersaurus/113518072486297024
WOW!!! Thank you soooooo much! I don't have an account on mastodon so I'll reply here.
I really like Cab Ride, and for several years I would occasionally hum the game's music and say Honk Honk when I thought of the bear station attendant, so I'm glad I was able to tell you this time how much I like it! Thanks, meow~🐈️✨️
This is completely phenomenal.
why can I not break i am so confused
I simply adore this game. It's one of my favorites. Gonna throw this at all my fellow train enjoyers.
This is one of my favorite Pico-8 games now. It is really chill, thank you for making it. I think it would be cool to make a Wolfenstein/Doom mod with this concept. Where the train ride/route actually ends, but you would have a few different routes and reverse routes to choose from. Maybe with different themes too.
Great way to have a nice train time. Thank you!
Very pretty and cool game ! It's a very chill way to pass time ^^
What an amazingly neat concept. I do wish the train stops weren't that super specific about letting passengers on and had a slightly bigger margin of error. Other than that; perfect. I can't believe this wasn't done before.
As simple as this game is it's really beautiful ! I had a great time cruising the trains into the stations it's actually pretty relaxing ! Awesome work.
Honestly the only bad thing about this game is that it's, as far as I've looked, the only one of its kind. Pretty to look at and simple to play lol
I'd play more train driving games if only they looked even half as pretty as this and weren't so dang complicated
Good stuff and best of luck with your future projects!
Very charming ^-^
This is incredible! Great work
I love this so much :D THANK YOUU
Really, really love this - it's so chill and enjoyable.
Is there any way to be able to contact you about something maybe kinda-cool?
ryan@superraregames.com
So I've set up a Playstation TV with a PICO-8 emulator on it outputting to a spare monitor above my desk and having this in express/screensaver mode is great. How awkward would it be for a screensaver mode that automatically stops at stations? Thanks again for making Cab Ride.
Thanks for playing! Your setup sounds really cool.
Auto-stopping is something I have thought about. I am not 100% sure if I have enough space in the pico-8 cart to add this though. I have around 2-3% space left and one or two other fixes that need to go in to a release at some point in the next couple of months. If it's feasible I will add it, but I can't guarantee it.
Sorry I can't give anything more concrete at this time.
The game is really nice, I enjoyed it very much.
I am at peace with death
Wow. I love this so much. Thank you for making it!
Thank you, and you're welcome! :)
God, I'm glad I searched for games with procedural generation. What a calm, pleasant game! I'm glad I found this, and will certainly share with my friends.
Thanks, glad you enjoyed it!
enjoyed it too. I missed all stops but they let me keep on riding, felt a bit like a train robber. pico-8 has that special charme. Prehistoric pixel size with perfect 3D math. If you squeeze your eyes together to get a blur view, it looks almost photorealistic.
Thanks! From my limited research I found train sims seem ok with you missing stops (Train Sim 2020) at least until you reach the end.
almost cried for some reason. love this so much. thank you.
You're welcome and thanks for sharing :) Hope it was a positive experience.
That video was the original inspiration for Cab Ride! :)
This is pretty amazing. I turned the sound off and left it on my tv for a while traveling at the second to slowest speed possible. It was nice. It'd be nice if screensaver mode would turn off the counters at the top of the screen and also the big red/green markers, and maybe even have an option of auto stopping for passengers. I'd probably put it on my tv often. Really impressive for a pico-8 game.
Thanks! I'm planning an 'even more relaxed' mode soon, which removes the tutorial/goal/objective messages, leaving just the conductor message.
The red + green markers are red/green signals and my attempt at faking Unreal 1/UT99 style lighting bloom :)
'Very Chilled' Mode is now added :) (no HUD, bar station names)
This is lovely, only two suggestions I can think of :-
Option to have SFX only ("rattle-ker-chunk, rattle-ker-chunk, rattle-ker-chunk")?
Some way of game-ifying things more? A final score based on stop-rating, time taken, signals correctly passed?
Thanks!
Regarding sound - difficult, there is no ambient sound. We cut engine hum at the last minute as it messed with the music in the web player and couldn't find a way to get them to play nice.
If you finish a journey (hold left) you will get a journey report with that info summarised. An aggregate score might be something I investigate in future, but there are several features I want to get in v1.1 first.
really cool game, but at the beginning menu, I couldn´t read the text and the buttons, because there was to big pixels.
Thanks!
Was the in game text easier to read than the title screen text?
The font is fixed by PICO-8 but it would be possible to increase the contrast of the text.
"Was the in game text easier to read than the title screen text?":
a little bit
cool, I will give this some thought for a future release.
As a big rail enthusiast, I approve! This cozy little game has kept me entertained for the past few days, it's strangely addicting. Nicely done!
Thanks! Really great to hear that :)
Cab Ride is amazing; my wife and I have been mesmerized by it for the past two nights!
Would it be possible to get a "Sound on/off" toggle in the start button menu? I cannot figure out how to mute the sound of just the game on my iphone so I can play while listening to my own music (the song in the game is great, it just gets a bit repetitive after a while.)
Seriously great job on this, its fantastic!
Thanks! Really glad you and your wife have enjoyed it so much!
Re: sound toggle. Yes, definitely - it's near the top of my TODO. I didn't realise the mobile view of the game disables/hides that option. This will be in the next patch release (a few days away hopefully).
Wow, awesome! We'll be looking forward to it. Keep up the great work!
This has now been added to the pause menu. This might move to an on-screen button in future if the mobile view changes, but this allows the sound to be disabled for now :)
Great, thanks for adding that option! I will now put myself to sleep every night watching this while listening to real train sounds :)
Just a heads up: the music does not come back when toggling sound back ON (sound effects do become audible again). Resetting the cart via the menu brings it back. If it matters, I'm using Safari on an iphone, latest ios version.
No problem! The music not immediately coming back on is a known issue - it should start back up when the time of day next triggers the next track. If I can get the on screen buttons to work at some point, this will be fixed.
sweet!!
Thanks!
I had fun playing it, thanks for making it :)
Thanks, I'm glad! :)
when comes download?
They will be up by this Saturday :)
wooowww
:D
Wow, thanks for the video!
I love this game.
Thanks! :)
This feels so much like
Densha de Go!
and I say that with a lot of praise...
Haha thanks! :)
So awesome! I quickly felt myself relax <3
Nice! That's what I was going for :)
Beautiful
Thank you! :)
This is so wonderful and lovely, I've missed commuting and this really captures the more romantic parts of a journey - thank you!
Brilliant, glad it's filled a gap :)
This is lovely :)))
Thank you! :)
Awesome!!!
Thanks! :)
What a delightful time, adore the art and music! take me to chips parkway any day
Thank you! :)