hold the HI-WAY CITY sign, or press P, to open this.
in touch driving, tapping the road sends the car there and tapping a building drives it to the door. keyboard: arrows and space drive, enter goes in at the door he is parked at, and the numbers pick a colour on the wash's paint tools. driving into his house parks the car under the roof out of the rain, and that is the moment the town is written down - though it saves quietly by itself too, so nothing he builds is ever lost.
in the long wash, pressing SOAP keeps piling bubbles on and they do not stop at the car any more - keep pressing and the foam fills the whole screen, about eighteen presses, getting faster as it goes. the bar at the top right fills up with it. WATER takes it off: tap it to rinse a good share, or HOLD it down and it sprays until everything is gone, about three or four seconds from a full screen, with the car coming back roof-first. the three buttons are always on top of the foam and always work. just the car keeps the bubbles on the car the way they were before. the quick wash has no bubbles either way.
with hold and move, tapping a wash tool also puts it in his hand: SOAP becomes a fuzzy roller that turns as he pushes it and lays bubbles wherever it touches the car, so he can foam the bonnet and leave the boot bare; WATER becomes a hose whose spray washes the foam off where it lands, carving a full screen away in strokes; and DRY, once the car is clean, is a two-second hold with a ring round the button that fills - letting go early costs nothing. held perfectly still every tool still works, only slower, so he never has to be good at dragging. tapping the button he is holding puts the tool down again. TAPPING STILL DOES EVERYTHING IT ALWAYS DID either way, so a child who only taps still gets a whole wash - three or four taps on DRY fill the ring. with tap the buttons, the tools are never held: SOAP puffs, WATER rinses a share or drains the whole screen while it is held down, and DRY finishes on one tap. on a keyboard 1 2 3 hold the tool at the car and use it there, and 0 puts it down. the quick wash has no tools to hold either way.
the car dealership is a building he can put down like any other, and inside it every other vehicle in the game is standing in a bay - cars, a street sweeper, a lorry, a roller, a digger. he taps one and it swaps places with the one he drove in, then drives out in it. it comes in the colour it was standing in and he paints it at home the way he always has; nothing costs anything, nothing is locked, and the one he leaves behind is simply back in the showroom. a street sweeper of his own wipes mud puddles away as he drives over them. with this off, the dealership's door does not open and he keeps whatever he is driving - the building stays where it is.
the construction yard is another building he can put down with the hard hat, and it is where the tipper, the roller and the digger sleep instead of appearing out of nowhere. inside it there is a bay for each of them, one spare bay, a painted parking space and a mat by the gate. he taps a machine to take it out; his car slides into the parking space and waits for him there in its colour with its mud, and tapping it gives it straight back - ANY yard hands it back, so he can never be stranded a section away from where he left it. the backhoe lives here and nowhere else, and it is the one thing in the game that can drive off the road and onto the grass, at about two-thirds speed. it still cannot cross rock, water, a building or the edge of a section, and it still has to be on the road to drive out of one. with this off, the yard's gate does not open and he keeps whatever he is driving - the building stays where it is, and a machine he is already out in is not taken away.
for a child who is easily wound up, or who wants more going on. the roadworks dial stretches out the lorry and the roller so he can watch them properly (very slow takes about six seconds a square). rain is what makes new puddles; the orange phone button (S on a keyboard) calls the street sweeper, which drives a lap and wipes them away, and with mud puddles off it still rains but leaves nothing behind. with traffic on, whichever of the two is behind gives way: the car crawls along behind the sweeper and the sweeper waits behind the car; backing into the sweeper pushes it along; when he is stuck behind it, an arrow appears on the road and tapping twice past the sweeper takes him round. the red triangle is the hazard button (H on a keyboard): it blinks the car's four corners and tells the sweeper to go round him instead of queueing. R makes it rain right now, and works inside his house too so he can watch it arrive in the window.
the whole world lets him drive off the edge of the screen into new sections and build there - the road runs off the edge with an arrow on it, and tapping that takes him next door. one section keeps him on the single screen he started with: no arrows, no way out, and his own town to build in. nothing he has built is lost either way - the other sections are still there, exactly as he left them, the moment you switch back. if he is out in another section when you switch to one section, he comes straight home. on one section he can dig up the roads that used to run off the edge, and they are laid back for him when the whole world comes back, so a section he built is never left with no road to it.
cooking in the kitchen makes a mess, and it builds up faster the messier it already is - about thirty things he does take it from spotless to a room he cannot see the worktop in, with flour up the walls, dirty dishes stacked out of the sink and the chef hat gone crooked. IT STAYS: leaving without cleaning means it is just as bad when he comes back tomorrow, which is what makes the rags on the wall worth pressing. the door and the rags are always on top of it and always work. wipes itself up keeps the mess small and lets it tidy itself away behind him. this is a different thing from mud puddles above - that one is about the town.
another car drives itself around the town: it picks a road square, drives there, waits a moment with its hazard lights blinking and then goes somewhere else. it is somebody else's car, so it is never the colour his is. it obeys the same traffic rules the sweeper does - he crawls along behind it, backing into it pushes it along, and the red hazard button tells it to go round him. it never goes into a building and it never follows him into the next section. this is also how a FRIEND'S car will arrive later, when he and somebody else are driving round the same town from two screens; today the game drives it, and that is the only difference.
press the yellow hard hat button (B on a keyboard) and the grid's squares appear: the road tool lays a road (a lorry and a roller come and do it), the house tool puts a building on a grass square that has a road below it - it always offers a kind he has not got yet first, and the button shows a PICTURE of whatever it is about to build - tap it again to cycle to the next kind. only once he owns one of everything will it offer a second car wash or a second depot, which the row below turns off. there are two tool buttons, not three: the road tool cycles between laying and taking up, and its picture changes - tarmac when the next tap lays a road, a yellow digger when it takes one up. it always comes back on tarmac. roads work out their own shape from their neighbours, and a road square with a building over it cannot be dug up, so no door is ever left stranded.
every beep in the game - the buttons, arriving, splashing, the chimes.