Pace Cards

Pace Cards started as a spin-off from brick-bas. Once I had Godot running for one side project, a second one that mixed two things I like, F1 and deckbuilders, was hard to resist. Races run sector by sector: your car's pace sets the gaps, and when you get within half a second of a rival, it becomes a duel of lines and cards. Between races you collect cards and parts, sign sponsors, and try to climb from the Cadet Series to the Premier Grand Prix.

The look is late-90s PS1 racer, drawn the modern way: low-poly cars and tracks, but rendered at full resolution with clean edges, glow on the lamps and neon, and a CRT filter if you want one. The art went through a lot of rounds. Generated concepts set the direction, and the picked car concept was lifted straight into 3D and cleaned up in Blender, so the car you race is the one I picked rather than a hand-built lookalike. Skies, trees, and the title garage started as generated art too, converted down to fit the PS1 palette.

Sound took a few tries. The first engine was a synthesised loop that didn't care what the car was doing. Now every car runs a virtual seven-speed gearbox: it shifts up on the straights, blips down as the brake lights come on, and sits on the limiter in the pit lane, playing steady loops of one F1 V10 bent to the exact revs. The race engineer talks on the radio too, in nonsense syllables made in code and put through a team-radio filter.

It plays in the browser on desktop with a keyboard and mouse, and your career saves in the browser. It's an early build, so expect rough edges, and feedback is welcome on the itch.io page.