Free roam
Ride wherever you like: between the real buildings, over the bridges or slowly through the water. Press K for the city map and teleport, or look up a sight, square or street in the places index.
The game
Explore or race by bike, on foot or on horseback through the city of Artevelde!
Instant Gent is all of Ghent in 3D, in your browser. Ride about freely, race against horses or play short missions against the clock: by bike, on foot or on horseback.
Play nowFree · no account · works on PC, tablet and phone
Three ways to play
Races
Race alone against three computer horses, or two on one screen. Four routes: a lap of the centre, the Brugse Poort, from Sint-Pieters to Dampoort, and from the Overpoort to the S.M.A.K.
Missions
Short quests against the clock. An arrow under the timer shows the way, and the city map stays closed: no teleporting out of it.
The missions
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The Mystic Lamb is stolen! 2:30
A thief runs off from St Bavo's with the Ghent Altarpiece held high. Catch them.
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The last boat 1:00
From Jacob van Artevelde on the Vrijdagmarkt to the last boat waiting at the Graslei.
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The train to Bruges 4:00
Wrong station! From Gent-Dampoort right across town to Gent-Sint-Pieters.
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Student zombies 3:00
September in the Overpoort. Find ten lost student caps without a student throwing up on you.
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The City Run 3:30
Thousands of runners over the Veldstraat and the Korenmarkt. Get from St Bavo's to the Graslei without bumping into one.
What you ride
A bike, on foot, a horse, a cow, a tiger, a pig or a unicorn: take your pick, everything is equally fast and strong. Each player picks their colours too. In a race the computer rides horses.
Items, like in Mario Kart
Ride through the items on the track to pick them up (you carry up to three). A bunny hops after the rider ahead of you and spins them out, a hedgehog is dropped behind you, and a rain cloud flies to the leader and soaks them so they run slower. Jumping clears hedgehogs.
A city that lives
The Kouter has its Sunday flower market with the bandstand, the two neuzekes carts face off on the Groentenmarkt, someone is always playing the piano under the Stadshal and the beach at the Blaarmeersen is full. Cars and taxis drive the streets and stop for whoever is in the way.
Screenshots
Controls
| Player 1 | Player 2 | |
|---|---|---|
| Ride | W A S D | Arrow keys |
| Jump | Space | Right Shift |
| Use item | E | Enter |
| Throw a bunny backwards | S + E | ↓ + Enter |
- With a gamepad: A rides, B brakes, X jumps, Y uses your item. Gamepad 1 plays for player 1, gamepad 2 for player 2.
- On a phone or tablet your animal runs by itself: drag on the left to steer, tap Jump, Item and Brake on the right. Landscape works best.
- M turns the music on or off, N the sounds, Esc pauses. The game speaks Dutch, English, French and Spanish, and once loaded it plays without internet too.
How it was made
Vibe coded with love
Instant Gent started on 2 October 2026 as a copy of Paardenrace 2, a little horse racing game, and grew into a whole city in a few days. It is an experiment by Wouter and Julia: Claude Opus and OpenAI Sol wrote nearly all the code, while we played, watched and steered.
Ghent from open data
The streets, the water and the roughly 40,000 buildings come from OpenStreetMap. How high every roof stands is measured from the air by Digitaal Vlaanderen (the Digital Elevation Model of Flanders), and the hills under the city come from the same model.
The real landmarks
The Belfry, St Bavo's, the Gravensteen and the other landmarks are the City of Ghent's own 3D models (Gent in 3D), measured with a laser scan. The fronts of the best-known houses are drawn after photos on Wikimedia Commons and Mapillary.
Just in your browser
It all runs with three.js in your browser: nothing to install, no account. To find out what in the game is really Ghent, a second city joined: Lecce, in the south of Italy.
Want to know what there is to see first? The sights are all in the game, each with a button that takes you straight there.
Ready to go?
Play nowStill in development: expect some rough edges.