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.
I’m building it on my own, in the open, and you’re very welcome to come and watch it happen.
- 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.
The devlog
Come and watch it get built
All of this gets shown as it’s made — what worked, what didn’t, and the bits that broke in genuinely interesting ways. Start anywhere in the playlist; it goes back to when Oakhaven was an empty grey box.
Nothing loads from YouTube until you press play. Watch the full playlist → The channel →
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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
Also standing in Oakhaven
- The Sweatbox — a nightclub in a converted Victorian brick works
- Last Tenner Bets, and a full European roulette table
- Chish & Fips
- Bossman’s corner shop
- Bagshaws Butchers
- St Cuthbert’s
- The police station
- The incinerator plant
- 31 amenity buildings
- A drivable car and a delivery ebike
- An undercover officer who walks the footways properly and clocks what you’re up to
The demo goes to the list first, before it goes anywhere else.
Get the demoYou 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.
Free to every house
The Oakhaven Gazette
It lands on the mat at 6 Radworth Road every week, and in the game you pick it up off the doormat and read it standing in your own hall. It reports what has actually happened in Oakhaven — the golf club’s green fees, who got the bin contract, which pub is after a cleaner — and it never advertises anything you can’t go and do.
Devlog
Everything that broke, and why
I write up the work as it happens — what I was trying to do, what I used, the trap I fell into, and what the fix turned out to be. It is meant to be useful to anyone building something similar, so the headings are the symptoms rather than the diagnoses.
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 be straight with you about the state of everything, and let you watch things move across these columns as they happen.
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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
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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
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Planned
- Career progression — on the straight path and the other one
- Whatever’s out past the edge of the map
- Something worth finding underground
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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. If there’s something you’d push up the order, say so; I do read it, and it has changed my mind before.
The demo
Come along for the ride
There isn’t a demo yet. When there is, this lot get it first — before itch, before Steam, before anywhere.
One email, roughly monthly, and only when there’s something actually worth your time. No countdowns. No “exciting news”. Reply to any of them and it comes straight to me — I read every one, because there’s only me to read them. And your address doesn’t go anywhere near anybody else, ever, for any money.
Who’s making this
It’s just me — but you’re very welcome
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 — broken animations, buildings hovering a foot off the ground, the lot. And if you’ve lived somewhere like Radworth and I’ve got a detail wrong, please tell me. Somebody saying “that’s not how the bins work round our way” is genuinely the most useful thing I get sent.
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 in a database I control, encrypted — so even a stolen copy of that database is a list of ciphertext rather than a list of people. It’s used for exactly 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, and it takes you off my list, not some marketing company’s. The privacy notice names me, names the one company that helps me send the mail, and says exactly how long everything is 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 — come and be one of the first.
Join the list