The challenge was that the game had to be incorporated into the app without complicated integrations. This meant that the game needed to be webbased. The additional challenge was that the devices in Mexico are lower-specced than what we are used to. So we chose to go retro to be certain the performance was up-to-par across the line.

We used retro pixel art for the art style and recreated the whole circuit using ‘simple’. Because it was not 3d, we needed to create the car graphic from all sides to rotate it realistically. The game was developed in the Pixi.js framework. This is a WebGL 2D framework. But of course, we needed semi-3D. By using pixi-projection we could turn planes in perspective. This and our tiling system created a very flexible way of composing huge maps. We also created a way to edit the level and objects next to the circuit using Blender. For the sound design, we created a unique music track. The sound effects were a combination of retro sounds and more realistic-sounding samples.

The game needed to be easy to control. So there was no way to steer. The car followed the perfect line and the players needed to break and accelerate at the right times to keep it following the perfect path. This sounds simple, but it was pretty challenging. The project was a huge success. OXXO had a crazy amount of games played and the increase in sales was substantial.