Honest Rod’s Rollback Rally

A game made in a weekend for PlayJam 2.

Honest Rod, founder, director, chairman, and CEO of Honest Rod’s Classic Cars, has discovered a groundbreaking and legally questionable method for turning used cars into new ones… rolling back the odometer! Help Honest Rod crank down the mileage in all the gently pre-owned cars in his lot in this score chaser.

Crank the odometers as fast as you can during the time limit, but don’t crank too fast, or you’ll break something and Rod will have to sell the car as-is. Your score is based on how much “value” you “add” to these “classic” cars before time runs out.

“Honest Rod’s Rollback Rally is by far my favorite game in this game jam – honest!” - Honest Rod

“If I wasn’t honest, why would I call myself Honest Rod?” - Honest Rod

Strategy Guide

The goal is to crank the odometers to as close to 0 as possible (without going too far and rolling over to 999,999!), as quickly as possible without cranking too fast. Each car has a maximum cranking speed – go over it and you’ll cause damage that may jam the odometer and force you to sell the car as is. But crank too slowly and you won’t be able to sell as many cars during the time limit.

You can sell the  car you’re working on at any point. You’ll get the most value per car by cranking the odometer all the way to 0, but this may not be worth the time it takes on every car if you’re shooting for the highest possible total income. The lower the mileage on the odometer, the more “value” you’ll add by reducing it even further. For example, cranking a 500,000mi car down to 300,000 won’t add much value, but cranking a 70,000mi car to 1,000 miles takes a lot less cranking and makes the car seem brand new.

Don’t try what you learn in this game in real life. Honest Rod is just his nickname, not a statement of fact, much like how Red Bull doesn’t actually give you wings.

Credits

Special thanks to Kenney for the car assets, SONNISS for audio samples, and Panic for making the Playdate. This project uses fonts bundled with the Playdate SDK, under the CC BY 4.0 license.