Limited Racer
One finger, an accelerating car, and one more attempt to beat your record. A small Android racer built in a few weeks in 2013.
Why
In 2013, a phone was already a place to squeeze in a quick game. Limited Racer was built for that moment: a top-down racer you could understand immediately, then keep replaying to beat your own score.
I had been reading a LibGDX book on game development and wanted to turn the lessons into something people could actually play. I teamed up with a friend, a talented web designer, and in a few weeks we had a game on Google Play. A small idea was enough to take us from reading about game development to shipping one.
How
The controls fit under one finger. The challenge is keeping up:
- Swipe left or right to steer the car.
- Collect flags to earn points and push your record higher.
- Every 100 points, the car gets faster. The longer you last, the less room you have for mistakes.
Reach score milestones to unlock upgrades in the shop, including more points per flag and more speed, then try again.
Limited Racer launched on Google Play in March 2013, free with ads. Its second life came a decade later: I found the graphics and audio in my Dropbox, but the source code was gone. I open-sourced the surviving assets so at least that part of the game could be useful to someone else. It became a very personal lesson in preserving side projects.
