Road Riches
Road Riches is an idle game where you upgrade a road to earn more and more money. You upgrade the number of lanes, the quality and the speed limit to build the best road possible!
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Road Riches can be played now in your browser! This version is not supported, and any minor bugs will not be fixed. Please still let me know (minibonzogames@gmail.com) and known bugs will be posted here.
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Development Story
Road Riches was my ninth and last mobile game, also my second idle game (after Merge Coin). I made it immediately after finishing and releasing Juggle Tap in November 2023, for the rest of that month and December before releasing in January 2024. The idea for the game came out of an in-joke with one of my friends, which I can't really remember, all I know is that it somehow involved a road, and I was trying to brainstorm new game ideas at the time so I thought about what games could work around a road, and landed in this idle game. This was a good test of my 3D design skills, as I really enjoyed the 3D features in Mountain Rush, but my graphic design skills improved massively through making Leaf Buster and Juggle Tap, both exclusively 2D games. I really enjoyed planning out how all the upgrades would fit together and designing the different roadside features. All the hours I've spent looking out car windows on British motorways has finally contributed to something creatively in my life I guess. A feature I wish I had been able to add but ended up scrapping was the concept of the road lanes taking damage by being driven over and needing to be repaired to avoid accidents, which would shut a lane down, reducing profits. The issue with this is that it is an idle game, and I didn't want players coming back to the game to see that their road is completely destroyed and all the money they made while offline would be spent on road repairs rather than upgrades.
Gameplay and Controls
The gameplay all centres around the upgrades (explained below), but I also put some effort into the background of the game. Cars randomly spawn at the start of the road and move down the road, though this doesn't correlate to the earning of money. Money is given to the player every second based on the number of lanes, quality of each lane and speed limit of the road, and this amount is increased by purchasing upgrades. Money is also awarded to the player while they are offline, as is common in idle games, though this amount is lower compared to if they were online for the same period of time. The camera focuses on one lane at a time, and the lane in focus can be changed using the arrow buttons on the left and right edges of the screen. The 4 icons along the bottom edge of the screen are the menus, from left to right, Decorations, Settings, Upgrades and the Shop (for In-App Purchases. As the speed limit is increased, new items appear at the roadside, starting with a grassy pavement, before adding barriers, smaller signs, a layby, an emergency phone, bigger signs, and lights.
Upgrades
The upgrades are the main focus of the game, as they are in any idle game. There are 3 types of upgrades, Quality, Lanes and Speed. Quality is purchased for individual lanes, and increases the amount of money that that lane earns per second. There are many levels of Quality, including Dirt (the default), Dusty, Sandy, Gravel, Cobbled, Concrete, and Tarmac. Lanes is fairly self-explanatory, upgrading it increases the number of lanes in the road, starting at 1 and growing to a maximum of 8, 4 each way (the direction of travel is irrelevant to the gameplay). When new lanes are purchased, they always start at Dirt quality, regardless of the quality of other lanes, as they are all upgraded separately. Speed is also fairly self-explanatory, the speed limit can be increased up to 100km/h. As the speed limit increases, the objects at the roadside, like laybys, start to appear. Having more, faster lanes means more cards can travel across the road in a shorter time, earning more money for the player.
Decorations and Themes
I decided to add different decorations, themed around different colours, that could be purchased using Cogs, the premium currency in the game. Cogs can be obtained either by upgrading your road, or through In-App Purchases. There are 3 types of decorations, Backdrops, Banners and Accents, and 8 different coloured themes, Orange, Dark Blue, Yellow, Pink, Green, Purple, Red and Blue, alongside 4 “Epic” themes, Future, British, Cookie and Money. Backdrops change the colour of the grass at the sides of the road and the decoration, usually some type of tree. Banners display a coloured banner over the width of the road, and Accents display a coloured strip between each lane along the length of each lane, as well as the colour of the grass immediately below the fence. The Epic themes are my favourites, Future has a dark sky and neon-lit skyscrapers lining the road, Cookie has giant cookies like rocks lining the road, British has city buildings, including the Elizabeth Tower (more commonly known by the name of bell inside, Big Ben), and the iconic Gherkin from London. The Money theme is similar to in previous games, with banks lining the road.