The asphalt world

Gaynor considers the various buildings you’ll poke your nose around as the game’s main levels, with the journeys in between as evocative interstitials. “They aren’t so fleeting that they’re not an important part of the game,” he says, but they offer a useful breather from “exploration and finding all these things that you’re having these deep back and forth discussions about.” They’re useful as a pacing device, he adds, providing a natural ebb and flow to the story. “We asked ourselves: what are the parts of the road-trip experience that crystallise the memory of what it means? It’s not Desert Bus, it’s not a literal representation of it – it’s finding that balance, while making it feel like we do justice to the driving part of a road trip.”