Second Chance 18+

Hero shot — pending capture Radworth Road terraces, wide down the street, coloured front doors and telegraph poles receding. Midday, clear, sun ~61°. Capture at 2560×1440.

You’re out on licence. Go straight, go back, or try both and don’t get caught.

Second Chance is a first-person life sim set in Oakhaven, a Midlands town that doesn’t exist. The police drop you at 6 Radworth Road with an empty house, an empty pocket and a release programme to stick to. Eight point one square kilometres of red-brick terraces, a ring road, a river and a council estate — the people who live there, and one of you.

  • 8.1 km²Of Oakhaven, walkable
  • 546Terraced houses
  • 1,010Wheelie bins
  • 1Person building it

What this is

Oakhaven doesn’t know you’re here

At six in the morning Edward is already walking to the Slag & Slurry, because Edward always is. Denise is unlocking the job centre on Bestholme Road. Somewhere out on the ring road a refuse truck is starting its round. Twenty-five people, twenty-five front doors down twenty-eight streets, and every one of them somewhere to be — and one cold terrace at 6 Radworth Road with your name on the tenancy and nothing in it.

There’s no tutorial. Nothing floats above anyone’s head telling you what they’re for. It’s a town that was getting on perfectly well before you turned up, and it will carry on getting on whether you sort yourself out or not.

What you do about that is the game. There’s honest work going if you want it. There are other ways to make rent if you don’t. Most people end up doing a bit of both and hoping nobody’s counting.

Inside Radworth

What’s in the game today

Everything on this list is built and playable right now. Anything that isn’t is further down, on the roadmap, clearly marked.

  1. You arrive in the back of a police car

    The game opens with a lift you didn’t ask for. Two officers — voiced, unimpressed — drive you across the estate, put you out at 6 Radworth Road and remind you of the terms. Front door, empty house, and that’s the last favour anybody does you.

    Shot 11 — pendingOver the player’s shoulder at the kerb outside number 6, officer mid-lecture, car door open.

  2. They all actually live somewhere

    Twenty-five of them so far, with more moving in. Each has a name, a front door and somewhere to be, and they walk the real road network — round the corner, over the bridge, past the chippy. Follow one home and you’ll find their house. It is genuinely their house. There are 546 of those houses and 1,010 wheelie bins to go with them, because somebody has to put them out.

    Shot 1 — pendingEight o’clock pavement, three people walking in different directions, terraces receding.

  3. The Slag & Slurry

    Charlotte’s behind the bar. Pick up the menu, page through it properly, choose one of twenty drinks, and she’ll fetch it, pour it, carry it over and take your money. Five hundred pounds went in. Four hundred and ninety-three fifteen came out.

    Shot 2 — pendingCharlotte at the pump mid-pour, warm light, the bi-fold menu open on the bar in the foreground.

  4. Samantha’s on at eight

    An evening set in the corner — Irish, folk, a bit of country. Edward’s been on the same stool since opening and will be there when she packs up. Nobody in the Slurry is stood about waiting for you to walk in and trigger them.

    Shot 3 — pendingSamantha mid-song from floor level, stage light behind her, Edward’s stool in frame.

  5. Clock on: the refuse round

    Your phone goes at six. Wozza picks you up in the liveried flatbed and you spend the morning hand-shifting fly-tipped rubbish off the verges — cab, load, cab, load — then drive it out to the incinerator, tip it, and get paid for it. Honest work. It is exactly as glamorous as it sounds.

    Shot 9 — pendingThe flatbed pulled onto a verge, tipped mattresses and bags, Wozza in the cab, grey sky.

  6. Sign on: Bestholme Job Centre

    Denise has thirty-odd voiced lines and not one of them is encouraging. Take a seat, get called through, get asked what exactly you’ve been doing with yourself since you got out. The strip lighting alone will make you want a job.

    Shot 6b — pendingAcross the desk at Denise, notice boards behind, flat fluorescent light.

  7. There’s a phone in your pocket

    Tab brings up an Android-style handset with working turn-by-turn satnav. Set a destination, get in the car or on the delivery ebike, and follow it out through the ring road and over the bridges. It routes on the actual roads, not a straight line.

    Shot 10 — pendingFirst-person on the ebike, handset visible with the next-turn instruction, road ahead. HUD stays on for this one.

  8. Weather that isn’t decoration

    A full day/night cycle and a randomised weather system. Rain comes in, cloud rolls over, the light goes flat and grey, and then the streetlamps come on one at a time down the terrace. It’s the Midlands. Bring a coat.

    Shot 7 — pendingHeavy rain on a terraced street at dusk, sodium lamps just lit, wet tarmac as a near-mirror. Low camera, 40cm off the deck.

  9. The sky is not a texture

    Every star over Radworth comes out of the Yale Bright Star Catalogue and sits where it should. Real constellations, Polaris where Polaris goes, the Milky Way across the middle of it, and the moon at its correct phase for a Midlands August. Look up.

    Shot 8b — pendingThe Milky Way over terrace rooflines. No lens flare, no colour grade that lies about it.

Also standing in Oakhaven

The demo goes to the list first, before it goes anywhere else.

Get the demo
You may not leave the area.

It’s a condition of your licence. Everyone who’s been out here a while will tell you it isn’t the only reason.

The roadmap

Where this is going

No dates. I’m one person, and anybody giving you a date this early is lying to you or to themselves. What I can do is tell you exactly what state everything is in.

  1. In the game now

    • Oakhaven, and the twenty-five people living in it
    • The release drop-off at 6 Radworth Road
    • The Slag & Slurry, bar service and the evening set
    • The refuse round
    • The phone, and turn-by-turn satnav
    • Day/night, weather, and the real star map

  2. Being built

    • Fighting — fists, bats and blades
    • Below ground: the cave network
    • Signing on properly at the job centre
    • People on the street with nothing

  3. Planned

    • Career progression — on the straight path and the other one
    • Whatever’s out past the edge of the map
    • Something worth finding underground

  4. Ideas

    • The houses nobody will go in
    • Getting out of Oakhaven for good

This roadmap moves. When something shifts a column, the list hears about it first — that’s most of what the emails are.

The demo

Get it before anybody else

There isn’t a demo yet. When there is, it goes to this list first — before itch, before Steam, before anywhere.

One email, roughly monthly, and only when there’s something actually worth showing you. No countdowns. No “exciting news”. Your address doesn’t go anywhere near anybody else, ever, for any money.

Who’s making this

It’s just me

I’m one person building Second Chance in Unreal Engine 5, on a machine with an 8 GB graphics card — which is a deliberate constraint, so that it runs on normal computers and not just on mine.

Oakhaven is invented, but it’s invented out of a real place. The brick, the road markings, the bus stops, the chip shop, the way the light goes at four in the afternoon in November — that’s all been looked at properly and built on purpose. If you’ve lived somewhere like Radworth you’ll know within about ten seconds whether I’ve got it right.

Everything gets shown as it’s built, warts and all, on the YouTube channel.

Questions

The obvious ones

What is Second Chance?

A first-person life sim set in Oakhaven, a Midlands town I made up. There’s a neighbourhood called Radworth — 8.1 km² of Victorian terraces, a ring road, a river with bridges and a council estate — and twenty-five people who live in it. You come out of prison on a release programme, get dropped at 6 Radworth Road with nothing, and work out what to do about that. If you came here from Schedule I or Drug Dealer Simulator: same appetite, very different world. Those games give you a loop. This one gives you a town, and the loop happens in it.

So do I have to go straight, or not?

Entirely up to you. There’s legitimate work — the refuse round is in the game now, and the job centre will put you onto more of it. There are other ways to make money that carry more risk. Most people will try to run both at once and see how long they can get away with it, which is the version I find most interesting. Career progression on both paths is planned, not built yet — it’s on the roadmap above.

Are there guns?

No. This is England. Firearms here mean armed response or somebody’s shotgun on a farm, and neither of those is a thing you carry about. Fighting is being built now, and it’s fists, whatever’s to hand, and the good sense to walk away.

When’s it out?

No date. I’m one person and anybody who gives you a date this early is lying to you or to themselves. Join the list and you’ll know the day I do.

What’ll it cost?

Not decided yet. What I can tell you now: one price, paid once. No subscription, no season pass, nothing sold inside the game.

What will I need to run it?

I don’t have verified minimum specs yet, and anyone quoting exact numbers before optimisation is guessing. What I can tell you is what I build it on: a Windows PC with 8 GB of video memory. That ceiling is a deliberate constraint I’m holding the whole project to, precisely so it runs on normal machines. Windows PC at launch. Proper specs go up here as soon as they’re real.

Is there a demo?

Not yet. It’s the next big thing after the current work, and it goes to this list first.

What’s the age rating?

It’s made for adults. It’s got strong language, drinking, gambling, sexual references, drug references and a general atmosphere of people doing things that would get them a caution. There’s no PEGI number on it yet — a rating gets issued when a game goes on sale, and it’ll be on this page the day it does. Until then: treat it as 18+, and don’t put it in front of a fourteen-year-old.

What happens to my email address?

It sits on a mailing list I control and it’s used for one thing: telling you about Second Chance. It isn’t sold, rented, swapped or handed to advertisers. Every email has a one-click unsubscribe that works immediately without asking you to log into anything. The privacy notice names me, names the companies that process the data on my behalf, and says exactly how long it’s kept.

I’ve found a bug, or I want to tell you something.

Please do. The game itself will have a report button that sends me the details directly. Failing that, email me — the more specific the better. “It crashed” is a start; “it crashed when I got out of the truck at the incinerator” is a fix. I read all of it myself, because there’s only me.

Still here? Go on then.

Join the list