Eight Regulars, One Bad Idea · Cartoon only
Why did the human cross the road? Nobody remembers. Hop through the school run, ride the keg rafts, stay off the tracks, and pick up vices that make the next hop harder than the last.
Two of you can play on one screen, and the camera goes with whoever is in front. Four of you can race online, a phone each, in the app. It all plays after too!
Free. No account. Saves to your device and nowhere else.
Live from the suburbs: Gary, the Mogul, the Beast and the Juice Express, in the game’s own models. The wobble is intentional.
Your browser could not render the diorama — three voxel regulars, Gary, the Mogul and the Beast, swaying on a strip of suburban grass while the school run passes, keg rafts drift and the Juice Express takes the crossing. The game needs WebGL too, so that is worth fixing.
The roster
Pick a regular and you get their neighbourhood, their traffic and their vices. Two are free. The rest cost stash, which you earn by picking up things you probably shouldn’t.
the suburbs
Tank top, stain, one bottle he has been nursing since Tuesday.
Free
the cul-de-sac
Mows at 7 a.m. Legally, and out of spite.
Free
the bachelorette strip
It’s her night. It has been her night since Thursday.
Unlock · 2,500 stash
the campus
Has a 9 a.m. tomorrow. Has had one every day for three weeks.
Unlock · 2,500 stash
the retirement village
Sherry at four, bingo at six, never lost a hand.
Unlock · 2,500 stash
the gilded strip
Owns the strip. Cannot find his car on it.
Unlock · 5,000 stash
the iron paradise
Never skips leg day. Skips the crosswalk.
Unlock · 5,000 stash
the bustling city
Has a motorcade. Sent it home. Regrets it.
Unlock · 5,000 stash
The pickups
Every pickup adds to your stash. Every pickup also does something to you. Grab another to top it up. Each world renames them to match the neighbourhood, but the effect is the effect.
The camera sways and blurs. You stagger about.
Beer in the suburbs. Sherry at Nana’s. Champagne on the gilded strip.
Everything runs 1.65x faster. So do you.
The baggie in the suburbs. Pre-workout at the gym. Study pills on campus.
The world slows to half speed. So do you.
The syringe in the suburbs. Painkillers in the cul-de-sac. A morphine drip at Nana’s.
Colors melt and little green friends show up. They’re harmless.
The leaf in the suburbs. A dab pen on campus. A shroom shake at the gym.
Grab them when you see them
Three of them. None shows up before row ten, and none shows up often.
Stand still too long, or fall behind the screen, and the world’s predator comes for you. It hovers for a moment before it grabs. If you are holding the hand, that moment is yours: flip it off. It leaves, offended. You live.
Double-tap, or press F, while it hovers.
Survive one hit. A bin lorry, a cash truck, a rolling wedding cake: one of them bounces off you. The next one does not.
Automatic. You will know when it is gone.
Miss the raft and the river has you, however many shields you are carrying — those are for traffic. This one is not. It inflates as you go in and you bob there instead, in the current, with the far bank somewhere ahead of you.
Automatic. Get out before the water carries you off the edge — it saves the fall, not the drift.
Your first run stops to teach you: one key at a time, then it lets go
Forward, back, left, right. Arrows and WASD work too. The screen keeps scrolling, so do not fall behind.
Water is not your friend tonight. Kegs, coolers, charpais, whatever floats in that world drifts with the current. Hop off before the edge.
When the lamps flash and the bell rings, stay off the tracks. The Juice Express, the Gains Train and the Money Train do not brake for anyone.
Bald eagle, cheel, buff pigeon, golden eagle, stork, pelican, campus goose, crow. Keep moving.
Pick two players and go: WASD against the arrow keys, one screen, one keyboard. On a phone, turn it sideways and you get half each. Fall off the back of the screen and you are out, so getting ahead is not politeness — it is the whole weapon.
In the phone app, race up to four people online. Everyone gets the same road and their own screen — no shared camera, so nobody is dragged along by whoever is fastest. Furthest down the road wins. Quick Match puts you in with whoever is around, or pass a code to a friend. Die early and you can watch the survivors finish. Not in the browser version — this one needs the app, where it is a one-off purchase.
Open it and there is stash waiting, more of it the more days in a row you turn up, plus three missions that change at midnight: reach row 70, ride five rafts, play a run as Nana. They pay for the other characters, so turning up is a way to earn them and not only playing well. No account and no server — your streak lives on your phone with everything else.
A switch in the settings, not something to unlock. Every world gets its own palette under cool blue moonlight, and the theme goes with it: muffled, sitting further back, with an echo on the tail.
Or take it with you: the Android app is on Google Play, free to download.
Entirely optional
Groggy Roads is free and it stays free. Every regular, every world and every vice is earned by playing, and there is no paywall anywhere in it. If the game got a laugh out of you on a bus somewhere, you can stand us a drink instead.
Every button opens the same checkout with the amount already filled in — change it to whatever you like. One-off, no account, no subscription. Cards are handled by Polar, who are the merchant of record — they are who you actually pay, and no card details touch this site. Nothing is fetched from them until you tap a button.
A tip buys you nothing in the game: no stash, no regulars, no ad-free build, no queue-jumping. All of that is already free. It only means we get to keep making these.
Keep reading