Pit stops you swipe.

I kind of ignored pit stops at the beginning. I didn’t want to make PocketGP overly complicated. But even in a casual game, you can’t really get around them. They’re just part of open-wheel racing.

So I started looking at experiences I could lean on to make the stop itself fun. Almost a game within the game. I’d seen reloading a gun done beautifully in another game, a few moves in smooth succession. That’s where the idea came from: you swipe your way through the stop, and how you swipe decides whether it’s a good stop or a bad one.

I wanted the steps to be really clear. You pull into your box, you see your car from straight above, and it says GET READY TO SWIPE. Swipe down and the tires come off. Swipe left for new tires. Swipe up and they go on. Then the car drops and off you go. Get a swipe right away and its arrow goes green. Miss it and it goes red. A quick stop gets “Good stop.” on the radio, and a slow one gets “Slow stop.”

I actually pictured it with nobody in it at first. Just the car and the arrows. Once it was working it looked a bit flat, so in came six crew in the team’s colours, four on the tires and two on the jacks. The first time I saw them all working round the car, it looked fantastic.

Still, I didn’t want a bad stop to take away from the casual nature of the game. A missed swipe never stops the stop. The crew fumbles a little: a wheel gun slips off the nut, or a new tire bounces out of someone’s hands. It costs you a bit of time, but you can catch up on the next one. There’s also a setting, PIT CREW, and on AUTO the crew does the whole stop for you.

Ultimately, I just wanted to bring in these moments that happen in a real Grand Prix and let you be part of them, in a way that’s still enjoyable and no more complicated than it needs to be.

KA