Problem
Arcade chase games like Smashy Road are fun for a minute and shallow after. Code Escape keeps the two-button controls but adds a real world to escape through: three islands, smart police, traffic and a run economy.
What I built
Everything, solo, working with several Claude Code sessions in parallel, in 22 active days.
Front · Game feel
- Two driving profiles (auto drift and an arcade profile with brake drift and handbrake) bound by a 25-test “vehicle behaviour contract”.
- A garage with 20 paints, a “Bodycam” HUD, a custom display font, and a native iOS haptics plugin with hit-stop and camera shake.
Behind · World pipeline
- 454 Blender Python generators (about 42k lines) build a 7×7 km world: three islands, 34.5 km of rural roads, six helipads and an army base.
- Meshes and placements export separately so Unity can GPU-instance them; an early pass placed 6,697 objects from 24 meshes, with an axis and scale self-check on import.
- A scripted Unity → Xcode → device pipeline installs signed builds on an iPhone.
Inside · Police AI
- Eight stages (P0–P7): line-of-sight perception, a search phase, recovery, side-rams, bridge roadblocks and a ★5 tank with 1,000 HP.
- AI traffic drives a lane graph exported from Blender; the minimap routes with A* over a baked 5 m grid.
Hard problems
- A world too big to hand-place — solved by generating it from code and instancing it on the GPU.
- Pursuit that feels fair — studied NFS Most Wanted pursuit tables and tuned heat levels from them.
- Keeping 246 scripts stable while moving fast — EditMode and PlayMode suites run on every change.
Results
A playable vertical slice running on iPhone, with a marketing and distribution partner signed for launch.