Use cartoony weapons, run over humans, take down the Goose Mafia, drop giant snowballs into crowds, fly your stunt car across a packed island. A Simpsons Hit & Run-inspired sandbox where the fun comes from embracing the chaos.
Fun through an immersive world rather than complex mechanics, with the player discovering it themselves.
Connected systems and simple tools create emergent gameplay, and I leaned into the chaos instead of controlling it.
Playtests made sure players never got lost or confused without a tutorial or voiceover.
Emergent gameplay. Weapons, vehicles, crowds and NPCs all interact, so players create their own stories.
Immersion over complexity. A world that's fun to poke at beats a deep mechanic that needs explaining.
One unique feature. Randy the raccoon reacts to player actions, which gives it a lot of personality.
Simpsons Hit & Run was the reference for the open-world sandbox feel, so I studied why it worked instead of copying it.
I made design decisions based on the target audience: players who want to mess around, not master a system.
Missions, NPCs, dialogue, a minimap and a physics-based car are all connected, so one action can ripple through the world.
What I ruled out. A voiceover or intro text would've been easy, but it broke a core pillar: let the player discover the world themselves.
What I did instead. NPCs explain the world through dialogue, so players pick things up as they play.
The trade-off. It meant heavy playtesting to make sure players didn't get lost or confused. It ended up being the right call.
NPC dialogue introduces the world instead of a voiceover or intro text
Weapons, vehicles and crowds that combine into unscripted moments
Designed and built the mission and NPC systems that run the world
A physics-based car controller tuned for stunts
Choices made around who the game is for
Heavy playtesting to keep players oriented without a tutorial
Giving systems room to collide produced better moments than scripting them.
If I hadn't written down the core mechanics, I would have lost sight of what made the game unique.
Playtests showed where players got lost, which is where my assumptions were wrong.
