Lucknow Auto Racer: Drive an Auto-Rickshaw Through Real Old Lucknow, Free in Your Browser

If you have ever sat in the back of a Lucknow auto, you know the feeling. The driver threads a gap that does not exist, waves at a cow, honks twice for luck and drops you at Hazratganj with a minute to spare. I wanted to bottle that feeling into a game you can play in a browser tab, so I built one.

Lucknow Auto Racer puts you in the driver’s seat of a green and yellow auto. Your shift starts at Chhota Imambara. Six passengers are waiting, every one of them is in a hurry, and the meter is running.

Play Lucknow Auto Racer free

What is Lucknow Auto Racer?

It is an arcade driving game set in the real heart of old Lucknow, the city of Nawabs in northern India. The tagline says it all: “Pehle aap… but get there first.” (“Pehle aap” means “after you”, the famous Lucknow politeness. Your passengers do not have time for it.)

The streets are not invented. The road network and buildings come from OpenStreetMap, Overture Maps and open building footprints, so the turns, junctions and lanes follow the real city. If you know Lucknow, you will recognise where you are. If you have never been, it is a fun way to see the old city.

The route: six fares, seven landmarks

A full shift runs about 7.8 km through the most famous part of the city. Each fare is one leg:

Yes, you really drive through Rumi Darwaza, the 18th-century gateway that has become the symbol of Lucknow. Along the way you pass the Husainabad Clock Tower, the Teele Wali Masjid, the Imambara gates, the unfinished Satkhanda tower, the arcades of Hazratganj and plenty of real shop names on real signboards.

How it plays

• Beat the meter. Every fare has a countdown. Arrive with time left and you earn a bonus on top of the base fare, paid straight to you “via UPIfree”.
• Earn stars. Finish a leg in under three quarters of the meter for 3 stars, inside the meter for 2, late for 1. A perfect shift is 18 stars.
• Fill your boost. Kulhad chai cups float along the road (one roughly every 150 m). Each one adds boost and ₹5. Near-misses with traffic add boost too.
• Listen to your passengers. They chat, complain, tell you local facts and crack jokes in natural Hindi voices, with subtitles in English. Some of the city trivia is genuinely useful if you ever visit.
• Two modes. Start shift is the timed six-fare race. Free roam gives you ₹150 and the whole map to explore at your own pace.

Controls

Keyboard

Phone and tablet

On a phone you get big on-screen buttons for steering, gas, brake, boost and horn, plus optional tilt steering, auto-gas and a left-handed layout in Settings. Turn your phone sideways for the best view. On Android, tap Install on the menu; on iPhone, use Share and then Add to Home Screen. It then opens full screen like a normal app.

Tips to earn more and finish faster

1. Follow the arrow, not your instincts. The arrow on the road and the turn pill at the top of the screen show the next turn. The yellow line on the minimap is your route. If you see “Off route”, press R instead of wandering.
2. Save boost for long straights. The Chowk to Aminabad leg (3.2 km) is the longest of the shift. Boosting into a crowded gali just ends in a bump.
3. Chase near-misses safely. Passing close to traffic above about 32 km/h counts as a near-miss: more boost and ₹5 in a shift. Actually hitting things costs time and adds bumps.
4. Honk before the cow, not at it. Press H a few metres early and the cows and pedestrians clear a path. Bumping a person at speed costs you ₹10.
5. Handbrake the tight corners. Lift off, tap Space, steer, then gas. The old-city lanes around Chowk reward this.
6. Never skip the chai. One kulhad is +25 boost. On a full shift you can collect forty or more.
7. Use the shops. Stop next to a shop sign and press E. Food stalls sell boost (galouti kabab, sheermal, kulhad chai), some buy you extra seconds on the meter, and a medical store can patch your auto (it removes 3 bumps).
8. Beat your own ghost times. Your best time for every leg is saved. The fare card shows it when the leg starts, so you always know the time to beat.
9. On a slow laptop? Open Settings and pick a lower Quality, or turn off shadows. The game also adjusts itself to your device automatically.

Hints and hidden extras (light spoilers)

• Souvenirs: chikan shops sell a chikan kurta and dupatta, and sweet shops sell a box of revdi. They go into your souvenir collection, which stays saved on your device. Can you collect them all?
• Daily cashback: look for a UPIfree spot and claim ₹20 cashback once a day.
• Free tips: one shop lets you “Ask AskBurg for a shortcut”. Another offers free Wi-Fi that tops up your boost.
• Talk to people: stop next to someone in the street and press E. Locals have plenty to say, in their own voices.
• Look up: kites on rooftop strings, pigeons circling the monuments and water tanks on every roof. Switch to evening with N to see Hazratganj lit up.
• Tongas still wait outside Bara Imambara, just like in real life, and Vikram tempos rattle through the traffic.
• Check your permit: the auto permit in the corner of the screen has a badge number and a home stand. Fans of Lucknow autos will spot the details.

How I built it

For the developers reading GeekLord, here is what is under the bonnet:

• Engine: three.js and WebGL, bundled with Vite. Everything runs in the browser, with no plugins.
• The city: roads and landmarks from OpenStreetMap; tens of thousands of extra building footprints and real place names from Overture Maps (including Google Open Buildings and Microsoft ML building data). A custom Python script turns them into roads, buildings, shopfronts and signboards along the route.
• 3D models: the landmarks and props were generated with AI and then optimised for the web. The newest street props (tongas, Vikram tempos, sugarcane juice carts, chaat thelas, peepal trees and more) come from my own image-to-3D pipeline running Microsoft’s TRELLIS.2 on cloud GPUs.
• Voices: every passenger, shopkeeper and narrator line is voiced with Sarvam AI’s Indian text-to-speech, with different personas and moods. I wrote the facts and jokes by hand so they stay accurate.
• Street life: hundreds of pedestrians in kurtas, sarees and school uniforms, along with cows, buffaloes, goats, street dogs, e-rickshaws, buses and bikes, all instanced for speed.
• Performance: quality tiers that adapt to your GPU, light models for phones, and a service worker so it loads instantly the second time and installs as an app.

Credits: map data © OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL); buildings and places from Overture Maps, Google Open Buildings (CC BY 4.0) and Microsoft ML Building Footprints (ODbL).

FAQ

Is it free? Yes. There are no ads, no sign-up and no in-app purchases. The rupees in the game are for fun only.

Does it work on mobile? Yes, on most modern Android phones and iPhones. Play in landscape for the best view.

Do I need to know Hindi? No. Every line has English subtitles. You can switch them to full, compact or off in Settings.

Is the map accurate? The road layout and building positions come from real open map data, and the main landmarks are placed where they stand. Some smaller details are simplified for gameplay.

Share it

If it made you smile, send it to a friend who misses Lucknow, or to anyone who thinks they can drive. Post your best shift time and star count and tag me.

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