Tuesdae Rush: A Unique Game Experience on Control and Letting Go

You know that grinding feeling you get on Tuesday morning? When Monday's energy is gone but you're nowhere near Friday? I turned that feeling into a game.

Not intentionally. I'm just not the biggest fan of games where there's too many things happening at too many different places all at once. So I made something different: a game where you control traffic lights at a simple intersection, helping colorful cars pass through safely.

That's it. That's the whole game.

It’s free to play 👉 tuesdae.games 🚦

Why traffic, though?

Here's the thing about ADHD brains (well, mine anyway): we're constantly managing internal traffic jams. Thoughts pile up at intersections, ideas crash into each other, and there's always this underlying hum of "too much happening at once."

But traffic lights? Traffic lights make sense. Red means stop. Green means go. There's order in the chaos, patterns you can follow, immediate cause and effect. Click a light, cars move. Simple.

I named it Tuesdae Rush because of that specific feeling you get on Tuesday. Monday's rush is new, still bearable because it's fresh. But Tuesday onward? That's when you start to feel the grind. The weight of the week settling in, but you're not quite at the midweek flow yet. It's that in-between tension I tried to capture, manageable pressure that keeps you engaged without overwhelming you.

The accidental poetry of it all

Something unexpected happened while building this game. I'd sit there at 2 AM, tweaking the car spawn rates, adjusting the timing, making sure the collision detection felt just right, and I'd realize I was completely calm. More focused than I'd been all day.

The act of creating order from chaos was somehow more satisfying than playing any stress-relief app I'd ever downloaded. I was literally programming serenity, line by line.

And when I finally played it? Even more interesting. There's something hypnotic about watching these little cars trust you to get them safely across. They just... flow. No rushing, no honking, no road rage. They wait when you tell them to wait, move when you give them the green light.

It's the kind of control I wish I had over my own thoughts sometimes.

What makes it work (for brains like mine)

The game follows a few principles that most games completely ignore:

Just four inputs. Four arrow keys control four traffic lights. That's it. No shooting, jumping, racing, flashing lights, none of the usual chaos. The game does most of the work, and you just control what matters. It's a mess you can actually manage.

No time pressure. Cars wait patiently. There's no ticking clock telling you you're failing. You can pause and think, or just let your brain zone out and react.

Immediate feedback. Every click does something visible right away. No complex menus, no hidden mechanics. Just clear cause and effect.

Predictable chaos. Cars spawn randomly, but they follow traffic rules. It's unpredictable enough to stay interesting, but structured enough that your brain can find patterns.

Small victories. Every car that makes it through safely gives you a little "+1" and a tiny burst of particles. It's like getting a high-five from the universe for doing something right.

The result is something that feels active enough to engage my scattered attention, but calm enough that I don't need to stress about it. It's meditative without being boring.

The beautiful chaos of exceptions

Here's where the game gets unexpectedly deep: most cars follow your traffic lights, but ambulances and police cars don't. They'll drive right through red lights because, well, they're emergency vehicles.

At first, this feels like the game breaking its own rules. But then you realize it's actually the most honest thing about it. Just like real life, there are things in your control and things that aren't. Sometimes stuff happens that doesn't wait for the perfect moment, emergencies don't check if you're ready for them.

When an ambulance barrels through your carefully managed intersection, you have to adapt. Make other good choices. Keep everything else flowing while handling the chaos you can't control. It's a surprisingly profound metaphor wrapped in a simple traffic game.

The calming accident

I didn't set out to make meditation software. I just wanted a game that didn't make my brain feel like it was stuck in a blender. But somewhere in the process of building it, I realized I'd stumbled onto something deeper.

Managing traffic became a metaphor for managing everything else. Learning to let cars flow when it's time, knowing when to stop them, finding rhythm in the randomness. There's something profound about helping things move safely through chaos, even if those "things" are just colorful rectangles on a screen.

Plus, there's the satisfaction of building something that works exactly the way your brain needs it to work. No compromises, no "well, most people like it this way." Just pure, custom-fit calm.

Try it (but don't overthink it)

Tuesdae Rush is free, works in any browser, and takes about 30 seconds to understand. There's no tutorial because you don't need one. Just click the traffic lights and see what happens.

Some people play it for five minutes and move on. Others (like me) find themselves coming back to it when the world feels too loud. Both are perfectly valid ways to engage with controlled chaos.

Fair warning: it's intentionally simple. There are no power-ups, no boss battles, no complex strategies to master. It's just you, some traffic lights, and the weirdly satisfying job of helping tiny cars navigate their tiny world.

Sometimes that's exactly what you need.

About

Tuesdae Rush is completely open source, if you're curious about the code or want to contribute, you can star the repo on GitHub.
The whole thing is built with Flutter and runs on web, mobile, and desktop.

I'm Rudi, founder of DoublOne (a chat-like email client), CaraML (the only AI chatbot you need), and builder of apps that improve quality of life.

If you enjoyed this post or want to see what I'm working on next, you can find me on X/Twitter, Github, Linkedin or check out my site: rudi.engineer.