A side-scrolling flow-racer. Drop in, let go, flow-state activated.
Side Whoop is a side-scrolling flow-racer about vibes. You ride a line through hand-built worlds with a drone that answers your every move, until you stop thinking and just flow. Easy to pick up. A lifetime to master.
You've had a day. Too fried for anything that asks you to think, too wired to just switch off. Side Whoop is for exactly that moment. No menus to wade through, no systems to manage, no friction - you drop in and within two seconds you're flying. The game asks one thing: find the flow. The drone answers everything you do, and once you stop overthinking the line, it opens up on its own. One clean run, the right track playing, and you hit a headspace most games make you earn for hours - delivered the moment you press start.
It's pure arcade, not a sim. The tricks trigger themselves - named for the real ones, thrown right - so the skill isn't execution, it's flow. Nine worlds, each built by hand, dynamic time of day and weather, each made of five sections that shuffle every run, so the line is never quite the same twice. One mistake ends it. That's the tension. And the restart is instant, because the whole point is one more run.
You know it, we all know it. Want to play something. Library doom-scroll. Feels work, not fun. Then: Loading screens. Tutorials. Forty minutes of overhead around ten minutes of the thing I actually wanted. Distractions. Other's interests, not mine. Close Library. New email: sales reminder.
Side Whoop is what I built to fill that gap - first for myself, then for everyone who knows the feeling.
Drop in, and in two seconds you're flying. The drone answers everything you do - come dance with me. Quit overthinking the line, and it opens up on its own. The right track playing, your head finally quiet. That headspace most games make you earn over hours, this one hands you the moment you press start.
I found that feeling for real flying FPV drones - years of it, the freedom and the focus, a mind at peace and dead serious at once. But this isn't a drone game, and it isn't a sim. It's about what flying does to you, not the machine. Same trick our favorite old school skating and snowboarding games pulled - keep the style, let flowing be the skill. The same place your head goes in RL with a snowboard strapped and fresh powder around - right song in your ears. The competition was never anyone else. It's you, and whether you can quiet your mind and lock in.
That's Side Whoop. Not here to be your friend - it's the one who challenges you, and pays you back a thousand times over when you rise to it.
Tricks auto-trigger - real tricks, named and thrown right - so you never fight the controls. Two runs in, you stop feeling the inputs and just ride. Mastery is mental: focus, quiet, flow.
No rivals, no leaderboard slop to grind. Highscore only, no mercy. The opponent is your own ability to stay loose and in the pocket. Tense up and you crash. Find the flow and you fly.
Miss a gate, clip a wall, lose signal - perma-death, run over. But the restart is instant, and the pull to go again is immediate. One more run. One more.
Music: Karl Casey @ White Bat Audio - synthwave that earns the genre instead of coasting on it. The Jukebox system is built around it: the playlist shuffles, every world opens on a different track, and when you crash and restart, the music carries through the shortest loading screen ever and picks up exactly where it left off. That's what turns "I died" into "again" before the thought even finishes.
The snap, the style, the subtle cockiness - drawn straight from the freestyle drone scene, by someone who actually lived it. Not a theme applied from outside. The real thing, distilled.
Controller-based, runs great on Steam Deck, scales from mid-range mobile to PC. Two modes: Time Attack and Unlimited.
Assets are easy to come by now. Turning them into a place - one with a mood, a story, a reason every neon sign and puddle sits exactly where it does - is the part where fifteen years of environment art pays the bill. Tokyo streets, ramen alleys, cyberpunk sprawl, Amsterdam canals, a parking garage, a bando warehouse and more: each one selected, arranged, balanced and dressed by hand until it stopped looking placed and started feeling lived-in. Dynamic time of day and weather on top. Then the real grind - optimising all of it to run sweet on a phone as well as a PC. Each world is five sections that shuffle every run, and in Unlimited mode they shuffle forever. Authored variety, never random noise.
Every world, every line of the flow, by hand. DevTrap uses whatever tool suits the job - and Side Whoop's soul could only come from a human making and executing every call, shaping every pixel.
The same craft that shipped triple-A environments, turned loose on a game that runs anywhere.
Full-resolution screenshots are in the downloadable asset pack (see Assets). PC release will feature 9 initial worlds. Mobile release will feature 3 included worlds + 2 DLC packs containing 3 worlds each.
Side Whoop is my solo debut.
Before it, about fifteen years in the industry - environment art and tech work on big games, teaching Unreal, Head of Department in Game Art Education, the whole range. Big productions teach you a lot about what makes a game feel good. It also teaches you how easily a clear idea gets watered down by too many cooks. I wanted to make one small, pure thing with none of that in the way - just the feeling, done right.
The truth under it: this scene gave me a career and a life, and Side Whoop is me wanting to give something back, something real and honest. That's what the long nights were for. It looks effortless on purpose - the smoother it rides, the more went into it, same as carving a clean line down a mountain. My wife said it best: you can feel all the love that went into it, everywhere.
If you've ever wanted to play something but couldn't face the effort of it - this one's for you. Drop in. Let go. Flow-state activated.
- Pat
The press pack includes: all nine world screenshots (4K), the hero art, two logo variants, and trailer links (Vimeo + YouTube).
