Lake Ontario: Bike Tour
Ride the north shore from Toronto to Kingston. Each morning, read the wind and choose where you sleep.
What it is
A bike tour along the north shore of Lake Ontario, from Toronto to Kingston, through twenty towns. Each morning you plan the day: the card shows today’s and tomorrow’s wind hour by hour, and the forecast is exact. Choose when to leave, between 6:30 and noon, and how far to go, town by town, with how your legs will feel at the end of each. Pick a town and ride. Your legs carry from day to day: a long hard day leaves you tired tomorrow, and a good night’s sleep brings them back.
The stretches you ride yourself
Eleven times along the way the game hands you the bike: along Toronto’s harbour, up onto the Bluffs, down into Port Hope, over the hill to the Glenora ferry, into Kingston and more. Tap L, R, L, R to pedal; you only move when you do. Shift gears for the hills and the wind, and steer around potholes, parked cars, gravel and slow riders.
A see-through pacer rides each stretch at a steady pace. Finish level with it or ahead with nothing hit for gold, level or ahead with something hit for silver, and within ten seconds for bronze. Your best ride of each stretch is kept, and on your next tour it rides beside you in gold.
Between the stretches
The day rides itself at the effort you choose (Easy, Steady or Push), and the map follows you. Stop at five lookouts on the way: the Bluffs, the long point, the dunes, the lake on the mountain and the turbines. You can rest a day in a town, and the ferry keeps its timetable.
The towns are drawn street by street: houses with driveways and yards, main streets of shops with their signs, churches, parks by the water, marinas and piers with their lighthouses, farms, and people out walking and riding. Evenings come with the town at dusk, its windows and street lamps lit.
Every tour can be finished, and the forecast never lies. Your train home leaves Kingston at noon on day 5. Nobody rides in the dark: the light goes about 25 minutes after sunset, and a day that runs late ends back at the last town.
How to play
- PedalThe two big pads, L and R, in turn
- SteerThe arrows beside the pads: one tap moves you one line across the road
- Change gearHarder and Easier, between the pads
- Look aroundDrag across the picture
The faster the rhythm, the faster the cadence; stop tapping and the bike rolls to a stop. Between stretches the card offers Easy, Steady or Push, a stop at the next lookout, sleeping in the next town, and the map (drag and pinch to zoom). Menu, beside Map and Sound, pauses the ride: Resume, How to play, Your best rides, Sound, Map, Start today again and Title screen, with Back on every page past the first.
On a desktop, use the mouse as you would touch; the wheel zooms the map. Or use the keys: A and D (or J and K) pedal; Left and Right steer; Up and Down (or W and S) shift; Enter presses the card’s main button; Space opens and closes the map; M turns the sound on and off; Escape opens the menu in a ride and goes back a page. Between stretches, Up and Down change the effort, S stops at the lookout and N sleeps in the next town.
What isn’t settled yet
It is for one player. Your tour lives in the browser it’s played in, so clearing the site’s data starts it over, and your best rides with it. An older phone may struggle: the picture steps down by itself after a few seconds of slow frames. There is no gamepad support, the keys can’t be remapped, and it isn’t playable with a screen reader.
Build Log
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Build 25
Toronto to Kingston by bike, a day at a time. Read the wind, choose where you sleep, and ride the hard stretches yourself against a pacer, with your best ride of each kept to race next time.
Credits and licences
Built on three.js, used under the MIT licence with the copyright notice retained in the shipped file. Typefaces are licensed under the SIL Open Font Licence. Cover drawn from the game’s own waterfront, lake, rider and bike code.
Lake Ontario: Bike Tour is original work by Launchway Games.