Turnpike by benjaminm

[raw]
made by benjaminm for Ludum Dare 59 (JAM)

Connect the intersections and let the cars through.

Select "Build" to start placing roads. Once you're finished, click "Start" and control the traffic lights. Don't let the cars collide!

Drivers here are impatient and won't wait for an intersection to clear. They also never look to the side.

Screenshot 2026-04-18 at 10.36.36 PM.png

Ratings

Overall 672th 3.184⭐ 21🧑‍⚖️
Fun 606th 3.079⭐ 21🧑‍⚖️
Innovation 610th 3.053⭐ 21🧑‍⚖️
Theme 308th 3.947⭐ 21🧑‍⚖️
Graphics 616th 3.289⭐ 21🧑‍⚖️
Humor 417th 2.794⭐ 19🧑‍⚖️
Mood 657th 3.194⭐ 20🧑‍⚖️
Given 22🗳️ 9🗨️

Feedback

fourApril
Apr 20th · 20:05 UTC
This is fun, but the crash sound is so loud I think I woke up the whole house.
OnlinE_Play
Apr 20th · 21:35 UTC
Great game! The mechanics are solid, but I think the balance could be improved a bit. At the start there should be only a few cars, and then suddenly you have to micromanage the traffic lights really quickly, which would feel like a progression.

That said, great job. I really enjoyed trying it out!
takhomasac
Apr 21st · 02:50 UTC
fun concept! we can never escape impatient drivers! :)
Steven Garberg
Apr 21st · 03:52 UTC
Plays like a solid tech demo for the traffic management portion of a city builder game!
aniretti
Apr 24th · 15:41 UTC
interesting concept! it's not entirely clear why, if we're building an intersection and it says the road only goes straight ahead, a car can still swerve sideways

i like the sounds of lego
brawnyfrogmouth
Apr 25th · 12:42 UTC
This was fun! I like the mechanics and the building / management gameplay loop. Once the intersections got complicated I started to have trouble keeping track of which direction the roads were going. But it felt satisfying to place the roads down!
zoeek
Apr 27th · 23:03 UTC
Fun game and idea. I played it for a good amount of time and was enjoying it. Felt like it got hard fairly quickly though! I had trouble with the third level.
JoeGreen
Apr 30th · 07:09 UTC
It was so nice to get back into that classic 8-bit game vibe.
Scottyartt
Apr 30th · 07:17 UTC
Love this traffic control concept, it is fun but needs a tutorial first
Asieke
Apr 30th · 07:59 UTC
I like the concept. Only made it to level 2. The high spawn rate plus the forced quad intersection made the level very rng on if an impatient driver would cause a crash.

Would have loved to try alternative builds, but there wasn't enough budget to do anything other than the simple direct path. Maybe later levels allowed for different build paths.
🎤 benjaminm
Apr 30th · 08:19 UTC
@asieke Thanks for playing! I didn't have much time to balance the game after building the core mechanics and logic but currently since cars are kinda dumb you just have to stop all lights and let only one lane through at a time (which, I know, isn't really how a real 4 way intersection should work).
zhangzhimu
May 03rd · 13:07 UTC
I have explored quite a few ideas using traffic signals to convey the theme. But this is the one that I think is the most interesting in terms of gameplay. Looking forward to future works.