Summary
- Pilot a bathtub on wheels across brutally steep off-road hills.
- What began life as a joke became a Foddian rage reality.
- Out Now on Xbox with XPA.
Every game has an origin story. Mine starts, fittingly, with a coffee machine and a terrible idea.
Back before Elegant Horse Studios was really Elegant Horse Studios, my co-founder Liudas (everyone calls him Hangeris) and I were still clocking into full-time corporate jobs, quietly dreaming of running our own indie studio. Our third co-founder, Tautvydas, was already in the picture; the three of us were deep in Sheep Sweep at the time. He just wasn’t in the room for this particular conversation. He worked at a different company, blissfully unaware of the craziness brewing around that coffee machine.
One afternoon, a few of us were loitering around the office coffee machine, doing what game devs do best: throwing around half-baked game ideas. Someone brought up Chained Together and the whole “Foddian” genre, those gloriously punishing games built to make you rage. That’s when Hangeris had his lightbulb moment. “You know what the world doesn’t have?” he said. “A standalone Foddian racing game.” And then, just to spice things up, he added: “And you’d control the car using only a mouse.”
We all laughed and shrugged it off. But if you know Hangeris, you know he’s physically incapable of letting an idea go untested. He went straight home after work and dove into the code, and one sleepless, hyper-caffeinated weekend later, a prototype of Driving Is Hard was done. He fired the build off to the rest of us, we gave it a whirl, and it was awful. Steering a car with nothing but a mouse turned out to be unintuitive, infuriating, and about as fun as parallel parking on a steep hill during a snowstorm. So, we quietly retired the mouse-only dream in favor of more traditional arcade-style controls.
With that hurdle cleared, Hangeris showed the updated prototype around again. This time, people loved it. That enthusiasm snowballed into a full studio discussion, and before anyone could talk us out of it, the coffee-break joke had become a real project.
A bathtub on wheels, with a semi-nude bald guy in it, sounded awesome.
That’s where I entered the chat. While Hangeris kept refining the car handling and tuning levels around playtest feedback, my job as lead artist was to give the game a real visual identity. I started by pitching three directions for the player’s vehicle: an RC car, a stylized racing car, or a buggy. We went with the buggy. Its open, exposed suspension paired beautifully with the game’s off-road terrain. So, I got to work, but something felt off. A plain off-road buggy was just too basic. Nothing that would make a person stop scrolling.
Then I remembered a story Hangeris once told me: as a kid, his family’s apartment had a bathtub, and after a renovation it vanished. Ever since, he’d quietly wanted a bathtub of his own, a wish that somehow never came true. And that’s when it clicked for me. A bathtub on wheels, with a semi-nude bald guy in it, sounded awesome. I threw together a quick prototype, we ran some tests, and the bathtub-on-wheels was unanimously approved.
You might be wondering how our bathtub pilot got the name Jeff. Simple: I was out on a walk with another developer, the one behind the horror game Baisu, who suggested naming the protagonist Jeff for the most airtight reason imaginable. “My name’s Jeff,” he said. And honestly, I couldn’t argue with that.
Not long after, Tautvydas jumped onto the project to pile on more features and lend a hand with development. And the rest, as they say, is history.
What began as a joke by a coffee machine is now a full-blown, rage-inducing, bathtub-racing reality. Jeff is ready. The hills are steep. The controls are unforgiving.
Driving Is Hard is available now on Xbox with Xbox Play Anywhere. Grab the wheel, climb into the tub, and see how far up the mountain you and Jeff can get before it all goes wrong.
Driving is Hard
Elegant Horse Studios
Features
• Drive a Bathtub: Navigate Jeff in a physics-based bathtub on wheels
• Select Your Difficulty: Driving is Easy for a relaxing time with checkpoints, Driving is Hard – the original challenge, Driving is Insane for insane people.
• Explore 7 Worlds: Each with unique challenges and mechanics.
• Easy to Play, Hard to Master: Simple controls, challenging mechanics.
• Emotional Journey: Jeff faces his father’s expectations and finds his own path.
• Customizable Bathtub: Unlock and use different car skins.
• Collect Soaps: Find 21 soaps as you play.
WARNING!
This difficult game tests your patience – falling is part of the challenge. Will you rise or quit when it gets tough?
The post Driving Is Hard: How a Coffee-Break Joke Became a Bathtub Rage Game appeared first on XBOX Wire.