Really fun to play, frustrating at first but it definitely becomes addictive after the 2-3 first upgrades.
I unlocked everything :D

Thanks for the feedback Hyorvenn - Glad you enjoyed it =]. Was it the controls that were troublesome when you started? I heard that the momentum based turning took some getting used to.

Nice game, got me a wile to get used with controls.. But after that, drift drift drift. :D

Very fun! A bit lacking in graphics but the concept is solid and the controls are fun, if tricky.

Definitely took a bit to figure out the controls are relative to world space. I kept trying to think of them as relative to the car direction. (So up always moved car forward in direction it was facing, vs up on the screen).

@GameCarpenter No problem !
About the controls, it was actually strange at first, but I guessed it was for the RPG gameplay and that it would be less and less slippery to control the car. But in the end I kind of liked it because it added a bit of a challenge.

Doesn't commit any game design crimes but isn't something that blew me away either. With some expanded gameplay and polished visuals and audio, this could be a lot of fun.

I enjoyed it, good game

I think the upgrade screen really needs some labels - I still have no idea what some of them did. And like @TimBeaudet it took me a little bit to figure out the controls (but once I did they were good, just not what I'd expect from a racer). And one minor bug is that if I was stopped (or going really slow) other cars could pass through me.

But other than that it's definitely a good start and I had a couple of fun races, especially once I had a few upgrades, it'd be interesting to see what you'd have been able to do if you had more time.

The idea was simple and fun, and the music was really good. The controls could have been better, and the other cars was way too fast for me, but overall a fine LD game.

I like the idea and I think it has a lot of potential! Your game is pretty rough around the edges, but I still had my fun with it after I got used to the controls.

Pretty cool! The idea is great for this theme, and generally the game works pretty well. Here's the stuff I made a not of:

- The upgrade menu really, really needs text telling me what the upgrades do. It doesn't really matter how you do it, where you place the text etc, but you must tell the player what the upgrades will do. The pictures tell me nothing.
+ The upgrade mechanics is generally really good for game jams. Even though you only have one level, there's still a lot of progress throughout the game, and I'm motivated to keep playing.
- A simple countdown before the race starts would be great. Sucks to start half a second later than my opponents.
- A simple pause menu letting me quit the game or return to the main menu would be great. Also would be nice with a simple win menu after the race is complete, telling me how much upgrade points I earned.

* The game just throws you into the race. Like wow, i barely have time to see that every other cars went ahead of me! A countdown is really needed for the game to feel fair
* The upgrade icons aren't clear; either use more understandable pictures, either write down what they do, cause we can't guess.
* It doesn't feel more satisfying to win than it is to lose. I think upgrades should be done depending on your performance to encourage the player to place as good as possible.
* I think the enemy cars should have a bit more health. It feels like the best way to win is to kill them, but I think it should be slightly harder to do so. I just used a few upgrades and I was already capable of winning by just kicking their butt. It's nice to be able to, but I think it shouldn't be as easy.
* the "rpg" part is actually just an upgrade mechanic, so I'm not sure it should be called rpg. (if you managed to squeeze in text boxes with some kind of story though, it would have sold it immensly)

That said, what I think feels right:

* upgrades are always a plus!
* getting overpowered.
* The grass slows you down enough to force you to stay on track.
* ... but getting overpowered breaks that. It's nice!


PS: You might wanna give likes to feedback (or at least the feedback you appreciated) as it helps people getting karma/helping out their own games to receive ratings

@Kwisarts Thanks for letting me know about the feedback system. As you might have seen, this is the first time I've (successfully) participated in LD.

It does seem to be a pretty consistent compliant that labels (or tooltips) are needed for the upgrades. I guess it was one of those blind spots for me in development, thinking that I could sufficiently convey enough of the effect with the icons.

I have a big wishlist of things to do for a post-compo version, and you touched on a lot of it =]. One thing I was considering was to do was to break the reward system into equipment, earned by spending money mostly gained from race completion with a performance bonus, and the skill tree, which would be based on experience gain, mostly earned from defeating enemy cars. I also thought adding little quests would be cool too to bring out those RPG mechanics a bit more.

You touched on the one thing that I personally really liked about the game, and that is that there are basically three things that impair your movement from checkpoint to checkpoint - your cars ability to move fast, other cars getting in your way, and slowing down in grass. Each section of the tech tree is meant to address one of those things: increasing your acceleration and top speed; making you slow down less, or damage enemies more; and getting better control of your turns, and be effected less by the grass. I think that's what makes the effect of the upgrade system work so well; you're breaking each rule in the game in degrees that hinder you from accomplishing your main goal.

@jk5000 Thanks for the comment on the music =]. The racing theme was done in LMMS, it's the first time I really successfully made use of that - wish I had more time to mess with it =]. The upgrade music loop was put together in bosca ceoil. I was pretty pleased how they both turned out all things considered =P.

The enemies do get way too fast as the number of runs you do gets high. In the post-compo version I'm working on, I capped their top speed. Eventually I might find a more elegant solution. The first race is also especially brutal, since there's no countdown, no tutorial, and the player hasn't had the chance to practice with the controls. It's definitely on the challenging side in general as well. Unless you're doing cheese strats to just kill everyone, in a single game it wouldn't be uncommon to only get first once, although top three should be within reach for the first 6 races or so =P.

@Slashee-the-Cow When you say they pass through you, do you mean they somehow move through you without colliding? If so that might be because I didn't cap their top speed, so on very late levels, they might move unreasonably fast in a single 'step' - and end up teleporting from one side of you to the other without touching your car =P. I capped their top speed in the post-compo version I'm working on, which should take care of that.

They also do temporarily go invincible / intangible for a short time after you hit them to prevent double hit type shenanigans. In the post-compo version, I made this more obvious (and increased the intangibility duration). There's a transparency effect in this version while they're intangible, but I think it's too understated, so it might be unclear whats going on.

If you meant that they don't slowdown / stop when they hit you (espc from behind) that's mostly because their driving logic is extremely simplified, you slow down, and they ignore everything (they plain cheat in those curves =P). I'd like to give them nicer AI and have them drive intelligently and have proper collision effects with other cars, but that is going to be beyond the scope of what I want to do in the next iteration of the this.

Thanks for the comment.

@LuckyFeathers Yeah, I think this game could easily have used 2-3 extra menu screens. I especially want to add one for the main menu with a how to play option. A post race screen is a high priority for the post-compo version, even if just to tell you where you placed. One of the issues is that I didn't commit the time toward implementing a proper reward system, so you just get 2 more upgrade points every time you finish a race =P. For the rest of this, you basically hit the top 4 items of my current to do list for the post-compo version XD. I agree that it'd be really nice to do countdown on start, its just annoying that it really requires graphics, sound, and coding to do a proper job of it... and then I feel weird not putting in some sort of turbo start reference =P.

Thanks for the comment.

Some of my favorite games in the past are Rock & Roll Racing and Super Off-Road, so I played your game til I was nearly maxxed out. One subtle touch I loved was seeing the car plumes change color, like red and teal as you upgraded it. That's not something you see very often but it's a great touch. It's like in Diablo when you upgrade a spell and now you're shooting 4 charged bolts instead of 3, that small visual upgrade is so much cooler than just raw stat boosts. Tbh I actually just plain liked the racing even w/o the rpg aspect. I though the track was pretty challenging to maximize since the road was relatively thin, other racers are on the road, and your handling is not great so you touch the grass a decent amount. I'm a fan of racing games so I'm biased, but I loved trying to master the track, as simple as it was. Subsequently as I was getting new upgrades I was changing my lines and routes, like cutting through the grass on the hairpin once I had an ok amount of speed. That was another unique aspect to your game that's not in the ones I mentioned above. I miss these kinds of games and would love to see another iteration of this one!

@gamecarpenter (well not sure I need to mention you since it's your page)

I don't think you necessarily need tooltips. To be more specific, if the picture is clear enough, you might not need to add anything else. Like in many things, less is more. The less you need to write down things, the faster and clearer it is for the player. But the icons should make you say "oh, so this is acceleration", and it's usually not easy to do. (so yeah, in that case, tooltips are definitely a plus. Also they allow to put your writing skills in place! i mean, in your case, an RPG racer, it would probably be good to have more text anyway. but it might not be the case of other games)

Note that feedback during the making is a good way to figure out what feels wrong or right. Be it actual gameplay or gifs/pictures (since those are easier to share).
To facilitate that, you should (if that's not already the case of course) join a community to share your work (and see other people's work!). It is, imo, one of the best ways to get sweet, crunchy feedback and even improve as a whole.

I see you used game maker. Are you part of the (reddit) game maker discord?
(we're friendly)
(I think)

@PeachTreeOath I'm glad you like it =]. I liked that upgrade line having an in-game effect too. I wanted to figure out a way to do something like that with all the upgrades, but as cool as it looks, the trail color change was the easiest idea to actually implement in the time I had =P. I'd like to do something with tire tracks for the green upgrade set, and do visual stuff 'on' the car for the yellow set. The top speed is a tricky one - without putting a speedometer in the UI, I think the best I could do are engine sound effects - maybe have every upgrade to top speed literally give you a new gear XD.

I have a post-compo version in progress that should coming sometime after the end of ratings. Don't know how much is going to end up going into it, but it should have some improvements in a few areas.

@Kwisarts Hmm, maybe with time I could have designed icons that were clearer, but its hard for me to judge since I know what it is already. There's one upgrade in particular that I'm pretty sure no one even knows what it does. As it is an RPG crossover, it would be cool to give like hard stats for the upgrades in a tooltip, but adding a label with some short names below the pictures would help make sure they were clear. That's the most likely thing to actually get done =P. Until then people will be stuck with the 'fire gloves' upgrade XD.

Thanks for the invite to the discord Kwisarts, I think it'd be a nice place to hang out while developing. I know I found it easier to develop my game while other people were working on theirs at the same time =P. I'm not great at community involvement, but it's easier when I'm talking about something I know really well =P. I'll probably stop by at some point.

@gamecarpenter

Well, if you decide to come, here's the invite:
https://discord.gg/By6u9pC

(PS: don't worry, you might tend to find people you'll end up knowing well at some point, we're like a big family)

When I opened the game, I saw the upgrading screen, at first I don't know how to start the game, maybe a button labeled "start" will make more sense to players. The implementation of racing part is minimal bu really fun. After a few laps of learning, I can even do drifting !