Florida Man

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$0

19:40

★★★★★

Radio 2D view

Get in Handbrake Brake Gas

Turn your phone sideways

On foot, the arrows or WASD move you relative to the camera: W away from it, S towards it, A and D left and right. Behind the wheel, they’re the gas, brake and steering. Click the game to capture the mouse, and the camera follows it; Esc gives the cursor back and pauses. Without capture, hold the right mouse button and drag to turn the camera. E gets you in and out, opens doors and talks to people; Space or Shift pulls the handbrake, or sprints on foot. F or the left mouse button fires, or throws a punch indoors; on foot, Q, Tab, the mouse wheel and 1–7 switch weapons (1 is fists). R skips to the next station; hold it for the radio wheel. In a car, the mouse wheel and number keys pick stations too. C toggles the overhead 2D view, H honks, Esc pauses and opens the volume sliders. On a phone, the stick under your left thumb moves you on foot (push it all the way to run) and steers the car. Drag your right thumb across the screen to turn the camera. The Fire, Gun and “Get in” buttons sit on the right, plus Gas, Brake and Handbrake behind the wheel. Hold the phone sideways.

Rules

1. You are Florida Man, straight out of the tabloid headlines: a sunburnt guy with a mullet, an open Hawaiian shirt and socks with sandals. The run starts on the boardwalk, and there is a pink Stingray parked right next to you — get in.
2. Any car will do: parked ones are yours for the taking, and a driver jumps out of a moving one on his own. Stealing a car with its driver in front of a cop earns a wanted star; with no police around it only raises suspicion. Six ramps stand around the city, yellow-and-black wedges in the right lane before intersections: go faster than 90 km/h and clear the intersection for a “unique stunt”. The first one pays, time slows down in the air, and the big map shows which stunts are still left. Thirty glowing packages are hidden around the island too, in backyards, on the beach and on the villa island: each one pays, the tenth, twentieth and thirtieth hold a gun, and none of them are on the map.
3. The pager hands out jobs one at a time. Delivery: pick up a parcel at the cyan beacon and drop it at the pink one before the timer runs out. Hot car: steal the car under the yellow beacon and bring it to the garage at the docks.
4. The money from jobs is your score. The more stars on your tail when you hand a job in, the more it pays: each star adds half the price. Loot lands in your wallet too — the bank vault, casino wins, cash lying around flats. You can spend it in town, but only jobs count towards the score.
5. Wanted stars come from stealing cars, running people over, ramming, shooting and explosions. One star is a single patrol, from three the cops shoot out of their windows, four bring a helicopter with a searchlight, five bring the whole island. Only people nearby hear a gunshot: a passer-by calls the police first and a patrol turns up a few seconds later, and shooting that hits nobody never gets you more than one star. Petty stuff — clipping a car in traffic, a carjacking, running someone over, a punch — does not earn a star right away: it builds suspicion, the first star fills up from the bottom, and a few quiet seconds later it cools off. It only turns into a star if a cop saw it or enough piled up in front of people — then someone calls the police.
6. Stars fade while the cops cannot see you: break the line of sight and lie low. Faster still, drive under the green roof of a respray shop — new paint, a fixed body and a clean record. The shop then needs a minute and a half to cool down.
7. Cops on foot make the arrests: once a patrol catches up, it stops and one or two officers get out. You get busted if a cop is right next to you and you stand still for a couple of seconds; walk and you get the nightstick, run and you get away. A cop goes down to a fist, a bullet, a car or a blast. A wrecked car burns for four seconds and explodes — get out in time and you live. On foot, watch out for cars: getting hit costs you health.
8. Wasted means walking out of the hospital: the patch-up costs $100 and the doctors keep your guns. Busted means walking out of the police station: the fine is $300 per star and your weapons are confiscated. They never take more than you have in your wallet. You get a stock pistol on the way out. The current job and favour fall through, but what you earned stays — the run goes on. Your result is the total you earned; for the leaderboard, the server adds it up from the jobs you handed in.
9. Weapons lie around town as glowing icons and come back 45 seconds after you take them; the whole arsenal is on sale at Pedro’s Guns. You start with a pistol and a bazooka with three rockets. The aim locks onto the nearest target ahead on its own. A passer-by you shoot falls over and gets back up — there is no blood in the game.
10. An explosion hits everything around it: cars, barrels — which go off next, in a chain — and buildings. A building soaks up damage, blackens, catches fire and finally folds into a pile of rubble. A collapsed building is two stars at once. Only sheds stay standing; a new run rebuilds the town.
11. Every building can be entered: walk up to a glowing door and press E. Each one has its own layout, and you may find cash, medkits and guns in the corners. While you are inside the cops cannot see you and the stars cool down, but only to one star, which stays until you step back outside. Only the safehouse lets you wait out a chase completely. The island’s special places are listed below.
12. You can fight with your fists too — key 1. A passer-by you punch may hit back, and the owners of a flat or shop you take cash, a medkit or a gun from will come at you. Knock someone down twice and they give up.
13. A yellow “!” over someone’s head or front door marks a neighbour with a favour: walk up, press E and hear them out. You take one favour at a time, and the game remembers finished ones between visits. The reward goes to your wallet, not your score, and the Neon Bay Tattler runs a headline about you. The five oddballs on the street make up the story: seven chapters in order, from a burger for granny to the key to the city and a ceremony on the villa island. The line under your job always says where to go next, a beacon leads to the right person, and the pause menu has a chapter log. Residents with a “!” over the door are side favours you can do any time.

Jobs

Two kinds of work on the pager. Delivery time depends on the route length, and every second left over pays a bonus.

Wanted stars

Crimes build up heat, and heat cools off while the cops cannot see you. Stars are heat thresholds, each with its own chase. While you are not wanted, petty crimes build suspicion first: they turn into a star only if a cop saw them or passers-by called the police.

Weapons

Seven of them, from fists to a bazooka. Guns are picked up in the street or bought at Pedro’s, and ammo stacks up to a cap. Only the pistol and the SMG fire from a car — sideways, out of the window. Gunfire alone annoys the police even if you hit nobody, but noise alone never gets you past one star: after that the heat comes from what you hit.

Explosions and destruction

Wrecked cars, rockets, grenades and red barrels all explode — there are forty barrels in town, and one takes its neighbours with it. Blasts wound buildings: soot on the walls first, then fire in the windows, and a bar over the building shows how much it has left. A tower takes many rockets, a stack of containers at the docks takes one grenade. A collapsed building leaves a pile of rubble you have to drive around and a dark patch on the radar.

Special places

An ordinary building is a flat, a hotel room, an office, a shop or a warehouse inside, each laid out to its own plan. The special places were built by hand; the clothes shop and the barbershop also have branches around the island, each with its own prices. Every one of them has its own sign on the radar and its own business:

• Pink Flamingo Hotel, Room 101 Safehouse: sleep it off and the heat is gone
• Pedro’s Guns Gun shop
• Fat Pelican Burgers A $10 burger tops up your health
• Hawaiian Paradise Boutique New outfit, and the cops are after some other guy Branches: Second Wind Thrift Store, Palms & Shorts, Neon Silk Boutique
• Golden Tide Casino Slot machines, $100 a spin
• Neon Gator Club Nightclub at the docks
• Mercy Bay Hospital Full patch-up for $50
• Neon Bay Police Station Turn yourself in: cheaper than getting busted
• First Coconut Bank The vault is behind the tellers
• Mullet Forever Barbershop New cut, new colour — now the cops are after a different head Branches: Hairspray & Palms Salon, Rusty Razor Barbershop

Clothes and haircuts

Clothes shops sell shirts, shorts, hats and shades; barbershops do haircuts and hair colour. While you’re wanted, a new look throws the cops off: new clothes knock off about one star, a haircut or dye job twice that. But only once a minute — you can’t fool the cops that often. The thrift store and the Rusty Razor are cheaper; the boutique by the casino and the Hairspray & Palms salon cost more. Your look sticks for the whole run, even after the hospital or the police station, and a new run puts you back in the pink shirt and mullet.

Garage

Seven models, all invented. The numbers are the same ones the engine drives on.

Radio

Every car plays Palm Shore radio — the island sits on the same coast. All six stations are on air at once: switch and you land mid-song, like a real receiver. R steps through the stations, holding R opens the wheel: point with the mouse or A/D and let go. In a car the mouse wheel and 1–6 work too (7 switches it off), and on a phone there is the Radio button. On foot it is quiet, and the last station is remembered.

• Neon Drive Italo disco
• Wave 101 Synthwave
• Palma FM Tropical house
• Port Bass Drum and bass
• Beds Rave Acid techno
• Counsel FM Corporate ambient

The same stations play in Leek Hunt, the top-down city game.

Why it looks like this

On purpose. The frame is drawn at 270 lines — close to the first PlayStation’s 240 — and stretched without smoothing; colour is cut down to 15 bits with a dither grid. Textures are tiny 64–128 pixel tiles with 16–32 colour palettes, like the console’s video memory: facades, asphalt, the faces of passers-by and Hawaiian shirts were drawn by a neural network and squeezed into the PS1 format by a script. All of them together weigh less than one photo. Neon, the sky and the sun over the ocean are drawn in code.

The island, cars, radio stations and cops are invented. Any likeness to real city games is the genre, not borrowing: there are no third-party names, logos or assets in the game.

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