Originally published as an Advisory Hour Substack post on 2026-10-20. This first-party site copy preserves the text, localizes public supporting media, and connects the record to its project trail.
Original post

In Revere’s Ride: Lantern Run, I’m returning to the Revolutionary War theme from Summer into AI, when we were building projects to commemorate the United States’ 250th birthday.
This version owes quite a bit to the footer of my website, which is a slightly ridiculous thing to say about a game.
I’ve written about that footer before. There’s a little robot fishing, boats moving through the water, and occasionally a high-tech airplane or drone flying overhead. All of it has this oil-painting aesthetic, and I’ve been pretty happy with how it turned out.
That got me thinking about revisiting one of the games I’d built just a few months ago. Keep the same kind of gameplay, bring it into three dimensions, add modeled characters, and give the whole thing that painted-canvas look.
So that’s what I did.
The scenery and characters all get the same oil-paint treatment. It gives the game a very particular feel, and it’s been interesting to see how much the experience changes when you take familiar gameplay and present it this way. Yes, even those tracks.

It also turns out to be pretty fun. I’ve played through quite a bit of it.
I’m not going to promise that it’s free of game-breaking bugs. Some of the bugs I’ve encountered are so ridiculous that I’ve felt inclined to leave them in. There’s something funny about them in a weird, meme-worthy way. At a certain point, I found myself enjoying what was happening enough that I didn’t particularly want to fix it.
Which is probably a questionable development philosophy, but it’s where I landed with this experiment.
Hopefully you enjoy some of it, too. Naturally, I also cut a trailer.
Here it is.
Play now: https://www.ericrhea.com/gamelab/projects/lantern-run/
Read more: https://www.ericrhea.com/gamelab/lantern-run.html

Don’t forget to visit the stable and purchase your upgrades!

Connected work
- Revere's Ride: Lantern Run Build Notes: Read how the game was made.
- Play Revere's Ride: Lantern Run: Ride through the painted countryside.