The Soothing Cruise
An endless, soothing coastal drive — pick a car, cruise an infinite curved highway, and watch the sky shift from day to golden hour to night.
Play online: https://akhanshasen.github.io/The-Soothing-Cruise/
Built with vanilla JavaScript, Three.js, and Kenney CC0 assets. No bundler required.
What it is
Sojourn is a mood piece, not an arcade. There are no laps, rivals, or traffic lights. You pick a car, roll onto an infinite two-lane road, and let the world change around you. Cruise assist can hold a gentle line down the lane so you can watch the sky. A synthesized radio plays original stations generated in the browser.
Features
- Endless highway generated as you drive: smooth curvature, elevation, and biome blends every 1.4 km.
- Eight scenic regions with high-contrast OpenCity-style palette — green grass left, sand and water right, dark asphalt, bright sky.
- Kenney CC0 vehicles — real low-poly GLB models from Kenney Car Kit. Run
npm run assets to refresh packs.
- Comfort physics with easing steering, weight pitch/roll, handbrake drift, off-road slowdown, and optional cruise assist.
- Cel-shaded look — MeshToonMaterial bands and ink outlines on the player car; flat unlit terrain for reliable WebGL across browsers.
- OpenCity-style HUD — minimap top-right, control hints and large KM/H speed readout along the bottom bar.
- Living sky — day, golden hour, dawn, and night. Headlights come on at dusk.
- Procedural radio — Harbor FM, Pine Frequency, Paper Moon, Night Bus. Zero MP3s.
- Keyboard, gamepad, and touch controls (OpenCity-compatible mapping).
- Zero-build static hosting via native ES modules and vendored Three.js.
Controls
| Action | Keyboard | Gamepad |
|---|
| Throttle | W / Up | RT |
| Brake / reverse | S / Down | LT |
| Steer | A D / Arrows | Left stick |
| Handbrake | Space | A |
| Look back | C | Y |
| Cruise assist | Q | — |
| Next / previous station | N / B | RB / LB |
| Photo-style camera | P (hold) | — |
| Reset | R | Back |
| Pause | Esc | Start |
On a phone, the left slider steers and the right pedals drive and brake.
Run locally
Needs Node 18+ only for the tiny static server. The game itself is static files.
npm start
Open the printed URL (default http://localhost:8000).
Live demo (GitHub Pages)
URL: https://akhanshasen.github.io/The-Soothing-Cruise/
Every push to main auto-deploys via GitHub Actions.
One-time setup (do this once in GitHub):
- Open The-Soothing-Cruise → Settings → Pages
- Under Build and deployment → Source, choose Deploy from a branch
- Branch:
gh-pages · Folder: / (root) · Save
- Wait ~1 minute, then open the URL above
If the site 404s, open Actions, re-run Deploy to GitHub Pages, then refresh after the run completes.
3D assets (Kenney CC0)
Player cars use GLB models from Kenney's Car Kit (included under assets/vehicles/). Trees, buildings, rocks, and road props come from the OpenCity repo (also Kenney CC0):
npm run assets # Kenney car kit zip
npm run assets:opencity # scenery GLBs from OpenCity (vegetation, city, house, forest, road)
License: CC0 1.0 — credit Kenney appreciated but not required. OpenCity assets are mirrored under assets/ with attribution in assets/LICENSE-opencity.txt. See also assets/LICENSE-kenney.txt.
Project layout
src/
audio/ Web Audio engine rumble, wind, and radio
core/ input, rng, math
render/ cel toon materials, ink outlines, renderer
ui/ HUD, garage, touch, CSS
vehicle/ cars, comfort physics, chase camera
world/ biomes, highway, streaming chunks, sky
main.js loop and menus
License
ISC. Original code and procedural audio. Three.js via CDN.
Akhansha Sen
