Impossible Road developer Kevin Ng talks inspirations, cheating, future plans, and more
What's YOUR high score?
Impossible Road is an extremely simple - yet extremely fun - fast-paced iOS arcade game in which you try to steer a "vessel" down a dangerous roller coaster-style track.
On its journey down the track, this vessel will scream around hairpin bends, over breakneck jumps, and pass through multiple point-scoring gates.
We got a chance to speak with Impossible Road developer Kevin Ng (a.k.a. Pixels on Toast) earlier today about the game's inspirations, future updates, possible new target platforms, and his personal high score.
This is what he said...
Pocket Gamer: What served as your inspiration for Impossible Road?Kevin Ng: There's some pretty obvious stuff like Super Hexagon, Mario Kart's Rainbow Road tracks, WipEout, and Super Monkey Ball, but Geoff Crammond's Stunt Car Racer was probably the most direct inspiration.
The slender, elevated tracks with heavy camber, and the sublime feeling of making jumps really made that game. Way ahead of its time in terms of physics-based gameplay.
Cheating is a big part of Impossible Road. Is this something you always planned to encourage?The cheating mechanic was definitely "found gameplay" rather than something pre-planned.
Earlier in my career, I would definitely do more design and planning on paper. Nowadays, though, I design more through iteration. You need your design to stay flexible enough to spot these opportunities when they arise.
I don't think I could have thought out the cheating mechanic without just playing around with the prototype and seeing what worked.
Do you plan to update Impossible Road with new content in the future? Maybe with weekly tournaments?The only new feature I can confirm at this point is some way to quick restart in the next version.
Other than that, I'm going to sit back and see how people are getting on with the game before deciding on any future updates.
Will you develop a version of Impossible Road for Android or any other mobile platforms?I'm definitely open to other platforms, including more mobile. It's early days yet, though, so we'll see what happens.
What's your personal high score at Impossible Road?278. And I really need to work on that now because people are pushing past me quite rapidly.
It's great to see people are starting to post videos and help one another out on forums. I have no doubt that 278 will be a fairly laughable score by next week.
