Completed Experiment

Mud Truck '99 makes the puddle part of the lesson.

An eleven-track arcade racer built to test whether mud can teach steering, braking, route choice, and restraint without turning the game into homework.

By Eric Rhea Three.js r185 Published August 27, 2026
Play Mud Truck '99 Open the Handling Lab
Mud Truck '99 race at a rain-soaked fairground with rival trucks, cyan gates, ramps, and the race HUD.
The fairground is bright. The racing line is not. Water, ruts, rivals, and ramps keep changing the useful answer.
Campaign
11 tracks
Garage
5 loadout slots
Rival field
Up to 3 trucks
Runtime
Local Three.js

The mud is not decoration

Mud Truck '99 is a closed browser-game experiment built around one question: can a track surface teach the player how to drive? Puddles carry wetness onto the exit. Deep mud takes speed. A clean line preserves momentum. A crate shortcut pays in score and splinters, then sends the truck into the next corner with less speed than it had before.

The game answers with an arcade campaign instead of a simulation manual. Follow the next cyan gate, read what the truck does, and decide whether the straight ahead is worth a coin line, a ramp, a pass, or a burst of boost.

Everything runs from static local files. Scores, medals, settings, campaign progress, and garage purchases stay in browser storage. The game makes no analytics or gameplay network calls.

Eleven tracks teach one decision at a time

The first courses isolate a skill. Later courses put the old choices back together under traffic and time pressure.

Stages 1 to 3

Find the line

Rookie Ring teaches ordered gates. Brake Barn adds a real braking zone. Bog Slalom asks the truck to leave water without losing the dry recovery.

Stages 4 and 5

Commit on purpose

Launch Yard rewards alignment before takeoff. Splinter Run makes the player choose between clean coins and a destructive crate shortcut.

Stages 6 to 8

Add other trucks

Rival Ring introduces passing and contact. Fairground Gauntlet adds boost pressure. Switchback Quarry tests early braking and tight-turn steering.

Stages 9 to 11

Recombine everything

Floodplain Eight, Crestline Charge, and Championship Mire overlap wet lines, traffic, ramps, boost, and the need to think two gates ahead.

Illustrated red and cream mud truck approaching a wet fairground gate, ramp, crates, and coin line.
The briefing art makes the bargain visible before the engine starts: gate, coins, ramp, crates, rain, and one heavy truck.

Read, commit, recover, repeat

  1. Read the gateOnly the next cyan checkpoint advances the route.
  2. Choose a lineCoins, crates, puddles, ramps, and rivals create different costs.
  3. Control the truckBrake early, countersteer, or hold the tight-turn modifier.
  4. Earn boostDrifts, landings, passes, near misses, and smashes refill the reserve.
  5. Recover quicklyReset from a buried line and protect the next attempt.
  6. Bank the resultMedals, times, coins, and the next lesson persist locally.

The menu, the mud, and the consequences

Mud Truck '99 title menu over the illuminated fairground track.
Quick Race opens the current lesson. Track Select, the garage, settings, and the driver briefing stay one step away.
Mud Truck '99 campaign selector listing the eleven driving lessons and saved medal states.
The campaign moves from one-lap fundamentals to a three-lap final recombination.
Mud Truck '99 pickup crossing a reflective puddle with water spray and wet tire marks.
Water keeps affecting the truck after the splash. The exit matters as much as the entry.
Two Mud Truck '99 racing trucks making contact on the wet fairground course.
Contact costs momentum, breaks the combo, and can shake panels from a rival.
Mud Truck '99 garage showing race coins, paint choices, owned parts, prices, and equipment tradeoffs.
The garage spends race coins on visible and mechanical tradeoffs. Practice passes open a track without awarding its campaign medal.
Mud Truck '99 running in phone landscape with steering, brake, boost, handbrake, reset, and pause controls.
Touch play uses landscape controls and pauses behind a clear rotation message in portrait.

The garage changes the tradeoff

Race coins buy three paints, three tire profiles, three suspensions, three exhausts, and three boost systems. A long-travel suspension settles harder landings. Bog tires hold wet lines but give up acceleration. The short boost cell hits hard and empties quickly. The game keeps one choice in each slot, so a loadout is a set of decisions rather than a pile of permanent upgrades.

Driving model

Handling Lab

Compare the legacy baseline, arcade speed, and final mud-rally target in a stripped-down top-down arena.

Open the Handling Lab
Crowd system

Spectator Lab

Switch between five fairground spectators, idle and cheer motions, and exact animation phases.

Open the Spectator Lab

What the closed experiment contains

The runtime uses Three.js r185, local PBR textures, adaptive drawing-buffer limits, restrained bloom, procedural rain and audio, persistent mud trails, breakable crates and fences, rival damage, automatic recovery, and a mobile-specific render budget. The game ships with no runtime framework or server dependency.

Build notesCampaign structure, surfaces, vehicle feedback, rendering, audio, and labs. ChangelogThe completed public GameLab release and its publishing record.