Whiplash Taxi Co
As featured in the Arcade Legend VR arcade!
Welcome to the Whiplash Taxi Company, where our motto is "The slower you're there, the lower the fare!"
As a valued employee and taxi driver, your job is to pick up passengers and deliver them to their destination as fast as possible, by any means necessary.
Controls:
- Left/Right => Steer
- Up/Down or Z/X => Accelerate/Brake
- X = Select option in menu
Passengers are easy to spot, just look for the big red arrows over their heads.
Simply stop next to them so they can jump in! Then follow the red destination indicator to the destination and stop when it says "stop!".
Repeat this as many times as possible in 5 minutes, and see how much $$$ you can bring in.
But beware, sometimes the direct route isn't the quickest.
To make it easier we have provide this giant map of Motsville. You may want to spend some time in "Free Explore" to get the layout. Or try some of the fully legitimate and not just driving-around-random-streets-way-too-fast street circuits, and maybe set a few lap records.
Remember, at Whiplash Taxis when we say "Break neck speeds", we mean it! (Hopefully not literally. Hopefully.)
Download
Click download now to get access to the following files:
Development log
- Suspension fix!Jan 26, 2024
- Whiplash Taxi - Minor updateOct 12, 2023
- Whiplash Taxi Co - p8 fileAug 18, 2023
- Whiplash Taxi Co - FarmsAug 14, 2023
- Tracks and bug fixesAug 06, 2023
- Whiplash Taxi Co - Minor enhancementsAug 01, 2023
Comments
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Hello! Really liked this game, so I featured it on my site with some other Pico-8 gems! Keep up the good work! https://erikhoudini.com/the_crypt/arcade/
Creative style, with charm!
Very fun game! Satisfying driving, been playing it loads on steam deck on the train :)
Thanks, glad you like it. :)
How do you run it on Steam Deck, if you don't mind me asking?
Just downloaded the Linux version in desktop mode and added it to steam as a non steam game, also set the included image as the game art.
Everything worked out of the box :D
Good to know.
Btw you might be interested in Whiplash Taxi + which now has a Linux version.
It doesn't have any music (yet), but otherwise is the same game but at 320x240 resolution, with better gamepad controls.
Nice game
Really enjoying the aesthetic of this!
This is a lot of fun, but holy hell the randomized traffic can be absolutely cancerous in the race mode. I honestly think the race mode would be way more enjoyable if traffic was turned off entirely. The randomized traffic during the races adds too much BS to the equation which ends up making it kind of frustrating.
Also, just would like to confirm if you tested all of the "gold" times to make sure they were realistically possible? A few of them seem like they might be nearly impossible to get unless you get perfect traffic RNG and drive extremely well on top of it. For instance on the "Downtown" track I drove a lap that I thought was pretty dang great where almost no traffic showed up and I didn't make any obvious mistakes or crash into anything and still only got a 27:00 and I'm not sure what else I'd need to do to shave off another second to get below the 26:00 and I was only able to get that 27:00 after doing the track maybe 30 times and finally getting a good lap with almost no traffic.
Other than this uncertainty it is still a lot of fun and has a great feel to it, especially for a "3D" PICO racer. The only other issue I've noticed is that every once in a while for some reason the car will seem to turn way harder to one direction or another than it usually would, like normally if I tap left it will just adjust slightly to the left, but every once in a while I'll tap a direction and the game will read it as if I'm doing a long press and turn HARD in that direction. Doesn't happen often, but I've noticed it happen like once every ten races or so.
Hey, thanks, I appreciate the feedback.
I personally like the traffic in street racing, but I can see why you might want to focus on driving the route. Perhaps I'll add a "no-traffic" option.
The gold times are all beatable (although I struggle a bit with "East" and "Flats"). For the tighter corners you actually maintain speed better if you slow down just enough so that you don't drift.
It occurred to me while recording this that the waypoints around the "East Suburbs" area might be a bit misleading. I.e. you can go straight, then make two 90 degree left-turns, whereas the arrow suggests you should turn left straight away, which then forces you to make an extra hairpin turn. Perhaps I can tidy that up a bit.
I haven't seen (noticed?) the hard turn issue yet. Which version are you playing on (browser/download/pico-8 etc)?
Maybe it's just a personal thing, but for myself at least it's incredibly frustrating to have a really fast lap that feels like I'm about to break a record completely ruined because of a blind corner where as soon as I make the turn "BAM!" another car is there for a head on collision bringing me to a near standstill deleting all momentum and completely ruining the lap. Like I seriously cannot overstate just how often that exact scenario happens. Or how often a car just so happens to block the intersection for a turn juuuust as I get to forcing me to either slow down entirely or crash into them, ect. It would be one thing if there was a degree of determinism to the traffic patterns during the races, so I could at least then plan for it, but it being totally randomized isn't very enjoyable to me personally, at least not for a mode that's all about trying to get the best possible time.
I've only played the game on browser so far. Last time I checked PICO wasn't free to download, but I'm not actually sure if that means I can't play games released for it without owning PICO itself, so I haven't even tried the download version.
Also, I was able to get my Downtown time to 26:09, just short of getting a gold time. I've been able to get silver in every race I've tried so far, but for some reason the gold times always seem to be juuust out of reach.
Edit: As a side note, I've been playing this a bit more today and haven't yet experienced the turning/key press issue that I did before so it's possible it was just an issue with my keyboard, maybe it wasn't plugged in all the way or who knows, but either way it appears to be fine now.
You can download standalone versions of the game for Windows, Mac, Linux. But if you prefer in-browser, the experience is identical anyway.
Anyway, I managed to squeeze in an option to turn off traffic in street races.
Awesome! I wasn't expecting anything like that so soon, but thank you for adding it!
The fact this was made in Pico-8 is mind-blowing haha
Having so much fun with this!! Super impressive work but also just a very delightful and full-featured game. So far I've managed $569 on Medium
Amazing game! Loved the Aesthetic reminiscent of late SNES / Doom era
Thanks! It's actually based on a Wolfenstein 3D style ray-casting renderer.
how to start the game?
Sorry, I forgot to add instructions for which keys to press.
Press X on the menu screen to select an option.
For example, select "Taxi Driver" and then "Drive" to play the standard game.
thanks, I did not expect such a nice physics in compatibility with a perfect pixel
Great work as always Tom!
Thanks Tim :)