NEON MAYHEM
Costa Rosa, 1986. A neon open world you play in your browser. Steal a ride, outrun the heat, take a job, buy a condo with the takings. Or just cruise the beachfront at night with the radio on.
A free, fan-made tribute inspired by Grand Theft Auto: Vice City (2002). Everything in the project is original work — the sentence you just read is the only place the original game is named.
What you can do
- 🚗 Drive anything — sports cars, bikes, a limo, an ice-cream truck, a monster truck. Drift, crash, catch fire.
- 🚁 Fly and sail — a helicopter, a plane that loops and rolls, parachutes, speedboats and a jet ski. Or swim off the beach.
- 🚓 Outrun the law — five stars of heat: roadblocks, spike strips, harbour launches, a helicopter. Break their line of sight to lose them.
- 💼 Take the work — street races, couriers, rampages, takedowns, taxi and ambulance shifts, Lola's story jobs, and favours for strangers.
- 🏝️ Two islands — the neon mainland, and Isla Verde across the channel once you've earned the bridges.
- 🏠 Walk in — every shop, a casino with horse racing, a glass car showroom, and homes you can buy.
- 🔍 Hunt — 25 stunt jumps and 30 lost mixtapes hidden around both islands.
- 📻 Turn up the radio — three synth stations, every note made live in your browser.
- 📟 Ask Lola — she can show you around on day one, tips you off the first time you meet anything, and
L asks her what to do next.
- 📷 Take pictures — an old film camera that prints the city like it's 1986.
Want the details? Read the full tour →
Screenshots
What's new
- 🏎 MINI MAYHEM RACE — toy buggies, two laps round the pitch at Memorial Stadium.
- 🏗 Import/export — two lists of wanted cars for the crane on the docks, paid by condition, with a bonus for each full list.
- 📻 Radio with personality — a frequency, a jingle and a DJ for every station, with talk and 1986 ads between the songs.
- 🔧 Damage you can see — bumpers that come off, bonnets that spring, tyres that burst and spark.
- 🏛 Landmarks — the Neon Tide on the strip, a stadium, a film lot and Rico's villa in the hills.
- 🕹 Cheats — PANZER, ASPIRINE, the weapon sets and the rest of Vice City's words, picked from a list (
`, the joystick button by the radar on a touchscreen, or the pause screen) or entered as button combos on a controller.
- 🪖 Six stars — the army, its soldiers and a tank you can take; and cruisers that ram, PIT and box you in.
- 💵 Store robberies — a gun on the clerk empties the till while you keep it there, and the law is waiting outside.
- 🔪 The arsenal — bat, knife, katana, chainsaw, grenades, Molotovs, a scoped sniper rifle and a rocket launcher, and a weapon wheel to pick them from.
- 🟣 Gangs and turf — Rico's crew in plum and black against Lola's people in pink, each on their own streets, drawing on sight once Rico has a price on you, and turf that changes hands as the story goes.
- 🎭 Story jobs in acts — a won race brings sore losers or the law, a rampage the crew behind it, the collector's bag goes back to the lock-up, and HIGH TIDE ends with Rico's stand on the marina.
- 🎬 Talking heads — Lola's jobs open on a cut to her lock-up, Vice City style: letterbox, the two of you face to face, subtitles with a face drawn in code and a babble voice for everyone. Rico gets his own cut to the marina before the end.
- 🏪 Businesses that pay — buy the barber, THREADS, a hardware store, the bar in the Lucky Gull, or VERDE CABS on Isla Verde (an open garage with a Tiger Cab for its owner, earning more with every fare you drive); the till fills every day for you to come and empty — and a hold-up there runs with it.
- 💰 The big score — once the bridges open, Lola wants the Savings & Loan: case it with your camera, fetch Benny "the Ear" from the marina, get a getaway car resprayed, then keep the floor while he works the vault.
- 🗞️ A city with its own business — getaway chases, hold-ups, an armoured van and racers at the lights; a dozen strangers with a favour each, on both islands; and the morning paper when you make the news.
Controls
The basics. Keys can be rebound from CONTROLS on the pause screen.
| Keyboard & mouse | Controller | Touch |
|---|
| Move · look | W A S D · mouse | left stick · right stick | stick · drag the right side |
| Sprint · jump | Shift · Space | B · A | RUN · JUMP |
| Aim · fire | RMB · LMB | LT · RT | AIM · FIRE |
| Get in · get out | F | Y | ENTER · EXIT |
| Drive · handbrake | W A S D · Space | RT / LT and left stick · A | GAS / BRAKE and stick · ⇋ |
| Horn | G | R3 | 📢 |
| Map · pause | P · Esc | BACK · START | tap the radar · ❚❚ |
| Ask Lola | L | START → 📟 ASK LOLA | 📟 · ❚❚ → 📟 ASK LOLA |
Flying, boats, menus and everything else: all controls →
Run it locally
Serve the folder from any static host (GitHub Pages works as-is):
python3 -m http.server 8000
# open http://localhost:8000
The only network request the game ever makes is an anonymous visit count (see Analytics), skipped entirely when you run it locally or offline.
Tech
- Plain JavaScript and three.js r128 (MIT, see THREE.LICENSE), vendored at
js/lib/three.min.js. No build step; it runs from file:// or any static host.
- All music and sound are synthesized at runtime with the Web Audio API.
- Every change ships only after headless verification:
test/smoke.js and test/regressions.js run in CI on every push.
- More in Under the hood.
Analytics
The published site counts visits and a handful of anonymous events — things like a session started, a mission or shift finished, a stunt jump found, a wanted level reached, aircraft flown, the bridges opened, a shop purchase made, a result card saved or shared — via GoatCounter: cookieless, no identifier stored in the browser, and nothing about you kept. js/analytics.js is a thin wrapper that silently no-ops when the counter is blocked or unavailable, so the game never depends on it. It is skipped entirely on file://, localhost and LAN addresses — a local or offline copy makes no network request at all.
Disclaimer
Fan-made tribute. Not affiliated with Rockstar Games or Take-Two Interactive. No original game assets used. All city names, brands, characters, and music in this project are invented; audio is synthesized at runtime.
